Wizards Of Waverly Place  The Holdover
by Thor2000
Summary: Something strange is happening behind the scenes of Waverly Place, and it's dangerously coming close to the Russo Family. Can they figure out what it is before it is too late?
1. Chapter 1

Some of the local kids knew it as Waverly Place High School, and some of the kids knew it as the Home of the Tribeca Turkeys, and yet, there was a very small population of uneducated rejects who called it by names not permitted mentioned in decent society. Whatever it was called, it was known as Tribeca Prep, a three story structure with a faculty of fifty-three teachers and a staff of twenty-seven. Eight hundred and seventy-three local Manhattan teenagers from the Greenwich Village area were herded here to learn the lessons that would help them in life, and a few of them resisted those lessons tooth-and-nail up to the point they would later become society's problem. One such student was Hank Ketchum, who left his shop class to go to the restroom. Two school semesters later, no one knew what had happened to him. Frank "Barf-Bag" Tracey was known for sitting in the back of classrooms and making noises as if he was about to regurgitate. No one liked sitting next to him, not even his sister. He was in detention so often that he got his mail there. Rainn Flickinger faked contractions to get out of tests, and after her daughter was born, she was pregnant again less than a month later. Michael McFarland was no problem at all, but rumors that the school was haunted started the week after Cleve "Suicide" Solomon left Michael locked in his third floor locker for five days screaming and yelling. They were among the worst of the lot, but they were easier to tolerate since they never attended class and were often living off the grid to avoid their parents. The hardest students to deal with were the ones who showed up on purpose not to study or be the best they could be but to cause as much strife and chaos as possible by showing up. One such student was the vacuous brunette whose parents owned a local sandwich shop. Most of her teachers believed she was so blonde that she hadn't yet figured out how to bleach her hair.

"Miss Russo!" History teacher Joanna Moran slammed the girl's textbook against her desk with a loud thundering crash. The girl jumped up from sleeping, flailing her head back and widening her eyes open as large as dinner plates.

"Is it three o'clock yet?" She cried out blinking her eyes several times.

"I imagine it is somewhere in the world, but not here…." Mrs. Moran was the secret infatuation for half the males in the junior class. She had the figure of a Sports Illustrated super model bound up in the clothing style of a prim librarian. Her stunning blue eyes made every boy gasp, and her short dark hair bounced across her shoulders like dancing waves of darkened wheat. Even garbed in her tight-fitting pink sweater and blue jeans, the guys in her history classes imagined and whispered dark little fantasies about getting to stay after school for tutoring. Alex Russo didn't see her appeal. She saw the woman as another antagonizing twenty-something educator trying to force them to learn hours and hours of useless trivial facts.

"Now, before you start forgetting what have learned…" Moran sat backward on the edge of her desk and watched Alex yawn wide enough to pass for one of the stone lions before the New York Municipal Library. "Don't forget you have book reports due, and I'm still waiting for homework assignments from some of you…" She looked at Alex. "Going back almost seventeen weeks…."

Alex yawned again as if she was a big mouth bass about to be pulled into a boat. The last seconds on the last three minutes of class were winding down before her.

"Oh, and I wanted to mention I have good news…" Mrs. Moran alighted. "Principal Laritate juggled the school budget so that we can all make the field trip to Washington D.C."

"What made him change his mind?" Harper Finkle asked. "I though he said there was no chance in hell we were going."

"Maybe he was visited by three ghosts last night?" Aaron Danforth made a Dickensian comment.

"He said he thought about it and wanted to do the right thing." Their history teacher looked her twenty-two students over as they packed their book bags, turned to face the door and posed ready to run from this institute of learning and escape into the weekend rituals. "Oh, yes, and, Miss Russo, this field trip is mandatory if you want to pass my class."

"Why do you hate me so much?" Alex glared at her. "What did I ever do to you?"

"I don't know, Miss Russo…" The hot teacher responded. "I guess I just can't stand students who are throwing away the best years of their lives by sleeping and just sliding by doing nothing."

Alex rolled her eyes exasperatedly and looked to her best friend. She and Harper had known each other since kindergarten, but they couldn't be more different. Harper was a smart and mildly eccentric young lady who created her own clothes and lived a perpetually happy life of her own design while Alex was often sour, cynical and lazy, often bringing the worst out of others, but that was just the cover personality. Harper knew there was a decent person inside Alex, but she was buried so deep inside her.

The final school bed finally rang and the school corridors filled with numerous students charging in one direction. The lighter and quicker ones could navigate the stampede by darting in and out of the spaces in the halls and dodging the groups collecting at the lockers. Behind in the classrooms, teachers caught their breaths and headed straight to pour some coffee and relax. It took less than five minutes for the building to clear out except for the clubs and sports teams gathering around. Grabbing her purse to toss over her shoulder, Harper carried her books on her arm pulled up to her bosom and followed Alex heading toward her locker.

"Field trip?" Alex griped. "Field trip? What's so freaking important about Washington D.C.?"

"Uhhh…" Harper tried to explain it. "It's our nation's capital!"

Alex looked at Harper not getting it.

"It's where the President of the United States lives?"

Standing before her empty locker, Alex tried to remember who that was.

"The guy whose show pre-empts your TV shows!"

"Oh, that guy!" Alex finally got it. A few kids had dashed by saying good-bye to Harper. "Well, I've just got to tell him to stop doing that." Alex pulled out her purse, journal and sketchbook to take home.

"Good luck with that!" Harper rolled her eyes in disbelief and sometimes wondered why she and Alex stayed good friends. They had known each other since they were kids so they had an obvious bond. They knew each other's secrets. Alex knew Harper was a closet classical music geek, and Harper knew Alex was a sorceress. In fact, many of the Russos were practitioners of the mystical arts. Her father had given up his powers to get married, but Alex's brothers both knew spells and enchantments, her Uncle Kelbo was known in the family for mystically impersonating pop stars and their cousins used spells for enhancing their lifestyles. Admittedly, Harper was a bit scared of all the paranormal activity that occurred in the Russos's life, but after a while, she was slow to get used to it and realize that such things in the world like ghosts and witches actually existed.

"Thank god, it's Friday…" Alex slammed her locker shut. "I've got big plans for us on Saturday. Lafferty's is having a fifty-percent off sale on all clothes, shoes and accessories, and there's a killer jacket I want."

"Alex…" Harper turned to follow. "You know I like to design and create my own clothes."

"Yes, but they have stuff you can actually wear in public…"

Harper made a face.

"Sorry…" Alex apologized and headed down the back stairway of the school as the cafeteria was being closed up for the night. "Well, then… you can help me carry my stuff home."

"Now, wait a minute…." Harper thought again and stopped at the water fountain to drape her long hair behind her head to take a drink of water. A few fellow classmates rushed past to get out of the school while Alex stood and shifted her items to her other arm. "Maybe I can find a few things too…" Harper turned around after her drink. "My chalkboard dress could use a few accessories."

Alex turned her head to hide the fact that she was pretending to gag. Harper's chalkboard dress was a black dress with green sleeves that looked at if she'd peeled off it a grammar school wall and plastered it to herself. It was covered in math problems and had a real mini-chalk board attached to it, but it was still not as bad as Harper's magic marker dress that was quite literally covered in magic markers. A sound in her left ear made her look up, and she saw her principal coming out of the gymnasium. He was a huge fat figure of a man with a round neck covering a narrow collar and a smaller bespectacled had on top. He looked like the sort of man who lived at the local buffet. Worse yet, he thought he was accepted by the kids and tried to talk to them in their language and expressions, but no one had the guts to tell him that his references were about thirty years out of date.

"You two still here?" He looked them both over. "I hope you two aren't getting into mischief."

"No, sir, Principal Laritate." Harper spoke up.

"What are you going to do?" Alex quickly went on the offensive. "Give us detentions for not getting out of here fast enough?"

"No…" Their principal chuckled with a light grin. "I was just making a small observation." He pressed on past them to his office. "I hope you both have a nice weekend."

"Nice weekend?" Alex looked to Harper then looked again. "What kind of crack is that?"

"It's not a crack." Laritate checked the door to a classroom to make sure it was locked. "I just wanted to be nice to you girls."

"Nice?" Alex did not understand this new pleasant side of her principal. "Okay, who are you and what did you do to our principal?" He wasn't wearing his usual bolo tie. It was a regular black tie with a dark suit. His voice didn't have that usual Texas drawl he had. He looked like their regular school supervisor, but his voice was different. It wasn't just his voice; it was his demeanor… his personality. Maybe it was her mystical senses, but she felt as if someone else was in the man's body looking back at her. He grinned jovially with the presence of a fatherly relative; behind his glasses, his eyes twinkled with a bit of wry humor. He postured good-naturedly and beamed a huge jovial grin.

"See you Monday, girls…." He turned away heading down toward the offices and his side door from the junior classmen hallway. Alex watched him heading onward on his way.

"What's that all about?" Harper asked Alex.

"I don't know." Alex shuffled her purse and school books in her pack and hoisted them over her shoulder to head toward the front entryway of the school. At his office door, Herschel Laritate looked back at them curiously and hesitated. The two girls were getting further and further from him; their voices in the hall becoming subdued and gradually fading into distant echoes. Taking his hand off the door, he stepped back and watched Harper and Alex until they turned out of his line of sight into the front entry of the school. He exhaled a bit tiredly, closed his eyes and swooned slightly trying to catch his balance. His huge frame shuddered as if a large weight had been taken from him. When he looked up again, he clinked his eyes several times as if he was just waking up from a small nap. A deep breath came out of him in the form of a light yawn.

"What was I doing again?" He looked around distractedly and hurriedly trying to catch up with his memories. "Whoa, I never blocked out coming from the basement like that before!" His voice was different; his slight drawl was back. His feet ambled to hold him up on his feet. "Maybe I should have had a bigger lunch… Stupid diet…" He found an excuse for his brief lapse of memory. "Well, another Monday and another school week about to start…" He pushed forward into his office to start his day and check his schedule if but to discover he had somehow blacked out an entire week.

"Where in tarnation did this noose come from?" He started yanking off his tie with antagonized determination.


	2. Chapter 2

2

In the Fifties, the Waverly Subway Shop had been a hamburger place owned and run by Henry Russo. It was located in a five-story brownstone on Waverly Place next to an alley walkway separating it from the hardware and fix-it shop. Rumors were it was located on a mystical Native American site where spirits came and departed from other dimensions. Today, Henry's son, Jerry Russo, owned and ran the sandwich shop that operated there today. The small family business had enough seats for twenty-five customers, but it rarely had more than ten at any given time. His family lived in the second floor loft and hid their mystical secrets in the fourth floor attic accessed by a secret portal in the back of the shop's freezer. Reached by the spiral staircase in the alcove of the shop, the loft had its own stairwell next door to the shop that they shared with the apartment building over the coffee store and video rental place next door. On the third floor, each of the kids had their own bedroom and shared a bathroom while Jerry and his wife, Theresa, had their own bedroom and bathroom overlooking the street. Harper stayed in the basement-converted apartment reached from the stairwell behind the second-floor spiral staircase. It was an unconventional set-up for an unconventional family. Jerry and Theresa may not have been good parents, but they worked hard to keep it going. Jerry focused on the shop, and Theresa focused on the home and family, but she was not crazy about her husband's mystical legacy. Every time she turned around, something was getting levitated, someone had a spell on them or she had lost a few hours because Alex had cast a spell on her. Through it all, she tried to live with it. She loved her husband, she adored her children and she tried to make her mark in the local community every which way she could.

"Mom, you want me to take care of the dishes?" Justin came up to her.

"Why, thank you, Justin!" Theresa reacted surprised and pulled his head close to kiss his cheek. Trying to get her kids to help her was like trying to pull teeth. Alex never helped, and Max was always so distracted that he never knew what day of the week it was. She was more than willing to take it. The occasion, however, irked Max. One second, he was watching a cartoon platypus beating the heck out of a mad scientist on television; next, he was realizing his older brother was making him look bad by unloading the clean dishes from the dishwasher and then filling it with the dirty dishes without being asked to do it. A slight irritated twist of his head, he finally rose and headed over to Justin being the good son.

"I know what you're doing…" He looked briefly to his mother setting the table for dinner then back over the kitchen counter to Justin. "So stop it!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Justin reacted complacently oblivious.

"You're making me look bad by… helping!"

"I was just looking for something to do." Justin confessed.

"Why?"

"Virtue is it's own reward."

"Who are you?" Max reacted as if he didn't know this side of his brother then noticed his mother coming over to pull her Mexican chicken and rice dish from the oven. "Oh, look, mom… I'm helping Justin empty the dishwasher!"

"That's nice, sweetie." Theresa noticed and turned to the table with her steamed broccoli as Max waited for his kiss to the cheek and missed it. He just glared annoyingly to Justin and reached to the glass platter in the washer to put it in its place safely in the cabinet, but a few seconds later, it was slipping, bouncing off the edge of the counter and shattering on the linoleum floor. It was now Justin's chance to make a face as his mother whirled around to the sound.

"Max!" She was upset. "Your grandmother gave me that!"

"Sorry, mom…." Max felt bad. All he wanted was his mother's approval, and now he had broken her heart. Justin looked somewhat apologetic as they all looked at the sparkles of shattered glass on the floor.

"I got it, mom…" The big brother wanted to help his little brother. Justin held his hand out palm down over the area it had fallen and acted as if he was pulling on an invisible string. He tugged once and the tiny shards that had scattered a bit further away had started rolling back, a second tug and they all started dancing and jumping around on the floor. On the third tug, they all jumped up and started fusing back together at the molecular level to be joined again as one glass crystal platter once more leaping into Justin's fingers. Theresa was beaming ear to ear at that trick.

"Justin, wow…." She came over and looked it over and took the platter examining it for herself. "It looks perfect! Even that little chip from last Thanksgiving is gone!" She giggled lightly and turned to put it away again. Max couldn't stand it. He watched his brother put the clean silverware away then start filling the dirty dishes into the dishwasher.

"How did you do that without your wand?" Max asked him.

Justin paused and closed the dishwasher.

"I don't understand the question." Justin looked at him, toward the dinner table then back to Max. Theresa set out the last of the vegetables then turned to get the cups out of the cabinet. There were four kids and two adults; in all, six people at the dinner table on the landing under the big windows.

"Jerry…" She called down the stairs to the shop. "Dinner!"

"Just a minute…." Her husband called back from the shop. He had two customers, and one was getting ready to leave. Coming to clean the table, he said goodbye to the customer as Alex and Harper checked their watches from the both in the subway car where they did their homework together. Actually, Harper did her homework and Alex copied her answers, leaving a few blanks and wrong answers to throw off their teachers. Flipping the sign on the door to "Be Back Later" and lock it, he turned to the other customer rising and sipping his drink. It wasn't often he could get the shop empty at dinnertime.

"Why don't we go see that new Robert Pattinson movie tomorrow?" Harper carried her bottle of Pepsi with her and talked to Alex on the staircase.

"Not interested."

"Zac Efron?"

"Seen it…."

"Michayla?"

Alex made a long annoyed look at her.

"Oh, yeah… what was I thinking?" Harper quickly remembered Alex didn't care for female pop stars… especially brunette ones from Texas that hated Hannah Montana and starred in teen horror movies with Ashley Tisdale and Chad Dylan Cooper. On the second floor landing, they headed straight for the dinner table with Alex's father coming up behind them. Max was already in his seat against the windows, and Theresa was scooping spoonfuls of her cooking on to the plates. Justin poured himself tea, and Alex headed to the refrigerator to get a soda to drink at the table.

"It looks good, honey…" Jerry kissed his wife then reached past his daughter to take the pitcher of tea Justin was trying to return to the refrigerator. "So…" He sat down before the door to the patio. "Here's the part of the day Alex hates… what's going on in the lives of my kids."

"I discovered I can get my underwear to last another few days if I flip them inside out and wear the outside in." Max spoke up just as Justin tried to open his mouth. Harper looked up from sitting next to him and tried to squeeze her plate and chair between Alex and her father to get rid away from the Underwear Kid.

"Max, I don't want you doing that." Jerry blew on his rice to cool it before putting it his mouth. "Theresa, did you buy him more underwear?"

"Yes, but he still hasn't opened the pack I got him at Christmas." She looked to her youngest son.

"I'm going to…" Max was mixing his dinner together. "But I'm still a few Christmases behind…"

"Guess what I discovered?" Justin grinned a bit. "Did you know that Tribeca Prep was built atop another house?"

"Really?" Theresa offered Harper more rice.

"Who cares?" Alex mumbled as she scooped a spoonful of chicken to her lips.

"No, this is actually very interesting." Justin rested his arm against the table edge and postured with his fork as he talked. "It seems the school was built on a much older structure from the Civil War. It was used as an old hospital for soldiers, and according to legend, an old cache of forgotten gold and silver was left hidden in the basement."

"Justin, I wouldn't believe those old stories if I was you." Jerry ate dinner quickly to get back to the shop. "There have always been stories around here of something left behind from sometime, but when you go looking for it, some else already beat you to it."

"That's what I thought…." Justin swallowed what he had in his mouth and picked up where he had left off. "I asked Freddie about it, and he said the old owner purposely kept the house locked up so no one else could look for it, and he died penniless so he couldn't possibly have found it."

"Justin…" Max scoffed after mixing his rice, chicken, peas, carrots and broccoli into one integrated pile on his plate. "If there was anything like that in the underground rooms of the school basement, I would have found it by now."

"What are you doing in the underground rooms of the school?" Theresa looked at her son.

"Who said anything about me being down there?" Max had froze up and tried to cover up his hobbies.

"Wait, are you talking about Freddie the old janitor?" Harper made a face of confused disbelief. "Justin, that guy is weird! He also claimed that Mrs. Brunner the lab teacher ate a kid just because she was seven months pregnant!"

"I loved that story!" Alex began laughing. "Remember when he told us that the mystery meat was made from the missing band members." She started laughing.

"You mean it wasn't?" Max looked up. "I skipped eating spaghetti in the cafeteria for three months because of that story!" He remembered another story from the lying janitor. "So, what about the Janitors Hall of Fame in Utah? What about Janitor's Day? I already wrapped his gift!"

"Max, stay away from that janitor." Jerry shook his head in disbelief.

"Maybe he lied about everything else…" Justin looked up to his mother than looked around back to Alex. "But I checked on this… Part of the school basement was added on to another much older basement, but it's a lot to check out. Alex, I was wondering if you'd like to help me check it out."

"Uhhhh… no…." Alex looked as if she was considering it for a second than made a face. "I ain't going in that dark, dingy basement." She looked to her best friend. "Take Harper!"

"Oh, yeah, sure…" Harper dropped her fork upset. "Ask the girl who lives in the basement. Sure – she doesn't mind going underground!"

"Alex…" Justin looked at her. "Aren't you the least but curious…" He watched her sipping her root beer. He listened to her gulping her drink three times then lower her can, pat her lips and burp at the table. Her parents stopped eating to send looks of disapproval as Max started laughing.

"Nope." Alex announced.

"Theresa…" Jerry looked around and spooned more rice as he pushed it together on his plate with a roll. "What was that crash up here earlier? I thought I heard glass breaking."

"Oh…" Theresa sipped her tea. "Max accidentally dropped that crystal platter your mother gave me when we got married, but, luckily, Justin knew a spell that put it back together."

"Good work, Justin…" Jerry nodded proudly and reached behind Theresa to pat his son on the back. "Which spell did you use? The _Crystal Transformus_ spell or the _Rictus Restorum_ spell?"

"Spell?" Justin reacted from getting put on the spot.

"I wish I was a wizard." Harper spoke up. "I dropped and broke my music box a few days ago. Justin, do you think you could fix that for me?"

"He didn't use a spell." Max spoke up. "He just did this over it." Max imitated what he had seen Justin do. He gestured as if he was bobbing an invisible object on a string over the oven tray with the chicken and rice. Jerry didn't recognize that spell. He had taught the kids all the spells he knew from his days as a wizard and that was not one of them.

"What spell is that, Justin?"

"Why are we talking about spells here?" Justin made a face of embarrassment and chortled under his breath. It wasn't much of a chortle, it was more of a awkward snicker as if he was nervous or secretive. "Look, mom made us a really good dinner here, and I don't think we should offend her by not eating or forgetting to thank her for making it." He kissed his mother. "Thanks, mom."

"You're welcome, Justin…" Theresa enjoyed the loving attention and looked to Jerry a bit confused.

"Please tell me it's not one of those British spells you learned from your friends at Hogwarts!" Alex was so tired of hearing about Justin talking about them.

"Okay…" Justin slowly relaxed and reached to sip his tea. "I won't tell you." Whether she knew it or not, Alex had just given him a nice cover for the incident….


	3. Chapter 3

3

Saturday morning, Max was ambling down stairs to make his morning cereal and watch cartoons on TV. He used to do it in his pajamas, but when he started doing it in his underwear, his mother got him the robe. Worse part, sometimes he didn't always wear it. Thankful for small miracles, Theresa thanked her lucky stars and started making breakfast for the rest of her family.

"Max…" She poured her morning coffee. "You always seem to be the first one up on Saturday." She turned to add her cream and sugar. "Why don't you sleep in just once?"

"What?" Max looked up from the TV. "And miss my cartoons?" He embraced his childhood as Justin embraced his neurosis. Over their heads, Justin was screaming his head off at something. Alex must have locked him out of the bathroom again. Rolling her eyes, Theresa held on to her coffee mug to keep from dropping it, let out a long tired breath and rushed to mediate the fight if but to meet Justin hurrying down to meet her.

"Mom, why did you let me fall asleep?" He was in a hurry to get somewhere. He stopped on the bottom step with his shoes and hurried pulled them on to tie them up. "I was supposed to head to meet Zeke after school last night so that we could work on our science project!"

"Well, how was I supposed to know that?" Theresa watched confused.

"How the heck did I black out an entire afternoon?" Justin jumped up looking for his schoolbooks. They were on the table behind the sofa. He pulled open his binder. "Look at this, Friday afternoon, we were supposed to write our project on alkalines and acids; Saturday, we were going to build our experiment. I'm ten hours behind schedule!"

"Well, Justin, I'm sorry…." Theresa watched and got tired just watching Justin rush through the kitchen grabbing a doughnut from the counter and a drinking straight from the orange juice to get his breakfast. "Maybe if you hadn't been so distracted with that story about hidden Civil War gold at the school last night you might have been able to budget your time better."

"What?" Justin reacted confused. "Mom, there's no gold hidden at the school." He finished his doughnut and downed another shot of orange juice from the container. "Look, can you cover for me in the shop this morning?"

"What? Well, I guess so…"

"Great!" He kissed his mom good-bye. "Tell Dad I'll be back this afternoon."

"Okay…" Theresa stood holding her coffee as Justin dashed out the door to the loft with his study materials and down the outside stairwell. Max looked up from the sofa. "That's weird…" She stood confused.

"I'm the one who said there was no gold hidden at the school." Max rose up during the commercial break of a cartoon about talking goldfish. "You're welcome…"

"No, not that…" Theresa thought back to last night. "Justin didn't fall asleep after school yesterday. He was up with us at dinner. In fact, he was the last one to bed last night."

"Mom, I try it best to not try to understand Justin." Max put his cereal bowl in the sink and took a canned soda from the refrigerator before taking down the bag of potato chips. "The point here is that he finally knew I was right."

"But he's the one who talked about it…" Theresa remained confused over this turn of events then decided to stop trying to figure it out for herself. "Max, have you seen your sister?"

"Harper or Alex?"

"Your sister, Har…." Theresa caught herself and wondered if being distracted was catching. "I mean, Alex!" Harper had been around them so long it seemed she really was her daughter.

"She was down here borrowing your credit card to go shopping." Max suddenly cringed and looked up embarrassingly. "Ooooo, I wasn't supposed to tell you that."

"Where'd she go?"

"I think she said something about Lafferty's one-day-only half-off sale." Max looked away checking his memories. "Or was it Rafferty's? Cafferty's?"

"I was supposed to go with her!" Theresa looked upset. She finished her coffee, rushed around the kitchen counter and stopped at the spiral staircase down into the sub shop. "Jerry, can you get by without me?" She called down. "Alex and Harper just took off with my credit card!"

"Where's Justin?" Jerry was busy getting the sandwich prep area ready to open the shop at eleven o'clock. He was heating the roast beef, ham and turkey for the sandwiches and mixing his signature tuna salad. The eating area still needed to be prepped, the ketchup and mustard containers had to be checked and the tables had to be wiped down to start the day.

"He has a project he has to do for school." Theresa called back.

"Send Max down!"

"No….." Max whined from the sofa.

"You heard your father." Theresa hurried up to her bedroom to change from her t-shirt and shorts to something better becoming a mother heading out to pretend she was her daughter's older sister. Lafferty's Women's Wear, meanwhile, had already opened and Alex and Harper were fifth in line behind a single mother and two friends from school with a trail of customers heading down to the corner at Haskell's Café and around to the electronics store. Mrs. Lafferty unlocked the entry way and girls from fifteen to twenty invaded the location with the presence of Vikings attacking a British village. Most of them hit their size areas, but Alex dashed straight toward the young girl's jackets with Harper trying to keep up with her. The store was bugger than her parent's sandwich shop. Ultra-modern in design, it had a ten-foot high ceiling with racks and bins of clothing creating pathways left and right. There were mirrors every five feet, an upstairs shoes area and fixtures that looked stolen from Buckingham Palace. Her fellow female classmates started grabbing up dresses to try on before dashing to changing areas, others meticulously poked through bins of jeans and blouses for specific brands. The location was on fire with dozens of conversations, questions and inquiries. Through this female jungle, Alex poked one after another through the girl's jackets.

"Crap and a half!" She turned to Harper upset. "They moved everything around since we were in here yesterday!"

"What are you looking for?" Harper leaned in close to Alex's ear under all these voices.

"Hello? What do you think I'm looking for?" Alex reacted mildly sarcastic. "Just that leather triple-zipped jacket with the adjustable waist band and deep pockets I showed you yesterday after school."

"Maybe someone already got it!" Harper theorized.

"No, it's still here somewhere…" Alex's voice trailed off. "You look over there for it, and I'll look over there…" She bolted around and past a mother with her infant son in a stroller. The little tyke looked around scared to death of all the furiously shopping female shoppers. Harper just looked at Alex with a deep frustrated sigh and turned around on her left heel. At the bottom of the staircase to the next level of the store, she looked around covertly, pretended to study the small statue at the bottom threshold then stepped into the empty alcove behind the potted plant. A light gesture to pull her hair back over one ear, she snapped her right fingers once and slapped her right leg three times as Alex's missing jacket jumped from a rack ten feet away, launched into the air and dropped into her hands behind the tall hydrangea. One customer saw the flying jacket out the corner of her eye and jumped back before passing it off as a figment of her imagination. Mrs. Lafferty's daughter whirled around from helping a customer to see the flying jacket coming down near the stairway, and Harper stepping out with it.

"Alex, is this it?" Harper tapped Alex on the shoulder.

"You found it!" Alex lit up. "Harper, where was it?"

"Oh, I just turned around…" The girl mused secretly. "And there it was!" She watched her best friend pulling it on then checking herself out in the mirror. "Uh, Alex…" Harper continued. "After we get done here, why don't we get some sushi? I've got a real craving for it."

"I thought you didn't like sushi." The young sorceress turned to check out her reflection again.

"Where would you get an idea like that?" Harper chuckled a bit. "I was thinking about heading to the Blue Sky."

"Harper," Alex reacted confused and annoyed. "That's all the way down town and across the street from our school."

"Really," Harper's tone changed to upset. "So, you can't let me pick where to have lunch after I helped you find your jacket?"

"Okay…." Alex groaned while rolling her eyes upward. "After we shop, we can go get sushi…" She turned round to look at the girl's jeans and met her mother standing there. White blouse, black skirt and Mexican wrap, Theresa Russo stood there annoyed. Alex's jaw dropped. Harper's hand annoyingly slapped her head, her eyes flared and her teeth gritted together at this roadblock to her plans.

"Oh, mom, there you are…." Alex now lit up smiling. "Look, I found your credit card."

Harper wandered back and forth stressing out.

"Oh, really, where did you find it? In my purse?" Theresa sounded angry, but her mood was quickly changing amongst all the happy and cheerful female customers. Luckily, her cab driver was a woman who also had a crazy daughter. "We're going to have to have a talk about this young lady!" She snatched her card back.

"Mom, please don't embarrass me." Alex pleaded.

"Would I do that?'" Theresa remembered what it was like to be a teenage girl. Unfortunately, she thought she still looked like one. "Excuse me," She waved down a clerk. "Do you have any nice blouses for a couple of high school girls?" She giggled effervescently with Alex groaning next to her. Harper was getting impatient as well. This was not what she had planned. She was going to indulge Alex's shopping spree and then spirit her off for sushi near the school. Sure there were other Chinese food places closer to Waverly Place, but this one was the one she wanted to check out – not so much for the food but for the location. Enduring two and a half hours of shopping with a middle-aged mother reliving her teenage years through her daughter, she tried on seventeen dresses, twenty-two pairs of shoes, nine hats and half an hour of looking over accessories before finally leaving and ditching Alex's mother in a cab to duck out the other passenger door and sending her back to Waverly Place with their packages. Now was the time for the young girls to save their day together. A quick ride on the bus and Alex was standing outside the concrete and brick walls of her school on a Saturday. There were a few lights on inside as the two girls stood at the corner looking up at it.

"Harper…" Alex was tired. The sun was close to setting, and the sky was lit up with shades of distant purple, red and orange. A slight breeze wafted her dark tresses. "What are we doing here on a Saturday?"

"Alex, you know that fortune Justin was talking about."

"What about it?"

"I think I know where it is." Her eyes lit up. "I know where there are some strange markings in one of the unused classrooms in the basement." She was grinning knowingly. "I was thinking… if there was something hidden behind it, it would sure be nice to have someone who knew magic who could remove the wall to get behind it."

"Is that why you wanted to drag me here?" Alex narrowed her eyes aggravatedly. "Let's just get your sushi fix and go home." She turned toward the Blue Sky, but Harper checked the traffic on the tree-lined street and quickly skirted over to the teacher's parking spots on this two-lane road. Behind her, Alex sighed a bit and decided to follow her.

"You're really going to go through with this, aren't you?" She looked at her a bit annoyed.

"Do you know how much Civil War gold and silver goes for these days?" Harper tried appealing to the greedy selfish side of Alex. "You would never have to work, and… you'd get it before Justin."

"Fine…." Alex bemoaned. "Let's get this stupid thing over with…" She sounded annoyed, but as she started thinking about it, she was starting to get interested. The entry way was unlocked, the lights were dimmed and the faraway sound of a floor waxer filled the cavernous corridors. Looking in the halls for teachers, they noticed Freddie at the end of the long hallway with the floor wax machine. His back was to them, his hips swaying side to side to the music of Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper from headphones that played the old songs of the Forties and Fifties in his ears. A dance step from his youth illuminated his job, but he didn't hear the two girls behind him slipping down staircases across from the back cafeteria. Under the back stairs to the second floor, the two girls acted like literary girl detectives descending into the part of the school regularly off limits to the students of Tribeca Prep. Alex had been here before. She'd been down here in the Ninth Grade to work off a detention, she'd been back here in the Tenth Grade for grievances to teachers and she'd been down here a year ago mouthing off on another occasion. In many ways, she knew the school better than Principal Laritate. She knew which stairwells had busted doors that headed down here, she knew about the adjacent halls that linked classrooms and she knew about the forgotten loft over the school auditorium where former drama teachers had saved old costumes and props. As much as she hated this school, she loved every nook and cranny of it. At the bottom, the hallway stretched a short way to a round chamber illuminated by one lone light. Beyond that, corridors stretched left right and forward filled with old classrooms used for storage. The ceiling was a network of vents, pipes, air ducts and wires. It was once meant for problem students to be separated from the regular students, but someone somewhere realized they wouldn't need as many teachers if they just mixed all the kids together.

"Which way?" Alex asked.

"Follow me…" Harper bolted ahead toward the chamber where all the tunnels separated and turned left. Shortly behind, Alex passed through the archway just as Harper vanished into the first empty room. A slight turn on her left foot, Alex was now coming up behind her. Harper hit the light switch and the lone single light bulb hanging from the ceiling flickered to life. The room was full of the old wooden desks from the Twenties piled up over each other across the back of the room. There had to be a hundred of them. There was a single teacher's desk without a chair, a dusty black board and not much of anything else beyond the dirty white walls covered in dust.

"Where are these markings?" Alex looked around.

"Oh,…" Harper reacted distracted. "Uh, you have to use your wand to get them to appear."

"Okay…" Alex pulled her wand from her boot. "I'll just… wait a second, how did you find them then?"

"What?" Harper found herself caught in a lie. She stood confronted by Alex for just a second then grabbed Alex's wand and darted from the room, grabbing the door and slamming it shut. Not sure what was happening, Alex stood surprised for just a second as the old metal door slammed shut against her in the room. Alex's wand in her teeth, Harper hurriedly put the latch back together and slipped the combination lock back into it. Alex's hands started pounding from the other side.

"Harper?" Alex pounded the door. "What's going on? Why did you lie to me?" Her palms struck the door harder. "This isn't funny! Let me out of here!" She started kicking and pounding the door.

A brief moment to catch her breath, Harper stood and listened to Alex in the room then cracked her stiff neck muscles sharp toward her left shoulder. A small grin alighted to her steps as she placed Alex's wand lightly on the small ledge on the wall outside the room. Alex was pounding harder and harder. As she pounded, she stopped briefly to listen to the hard soles of Harper's shoes tapping away on the cold wet concrete floor of the basement. She was leaving her!

"Harper!" She screamed louder than before.

Hurrying back to the main floor, Harper dashed up the steps to the main floor. While Alex's yelling and pounding reverberated in the basement, their echoes barely sounded in the stairwell under the back staircase in the school. At the top, they sounded like just a faraway thumping noise, and when she closed the door, she couldn't hear them at all. The school was empty; it was the weekend. Not even the teachers liked having to be here on the weekend. Coming around to the base of the stairs, Harper stood a moment and filled her lungs with air, releasing her breath as one long releasing gasp, but when she did so, she felt light-headed and started swooning. Hey eyes rolled sideways as if she was drugged, and then she leaned a bit too far to the left and dropped to the floor, her arms reaching out to stop her. On the floor, she caught her breath again and pulled her long brown locks of hair out of her face. Blinking her eyes, she looked around left then right.

"What the…" Where was she? "How did…" She lifted herself back up to her feet. "How'd I get here?"

"Harper!" A voice called to her. "Hey, what are you doing here?"

"Zeke?" Harper caught her breath and looked around confused. "What's going on? How'd I get here? The last thing I recall was getting ready to go shopping with Alex and then… I felt this really cold draft coming over me…. I mean, the Russo's basement is a little cold, but it's never…"

"Harper, I just found you standing here a minute ago." Zeke grinned at her. "Justin and I were up in the lab working on our project for science class, and…" Harper grabbed his arm and read his watch.

"5:45!" She was stunned into disbelief. "It's 5:45? What happened to me? Oh my God, Alex is going to be so mad at me!" She started to rush away. "Zeke, I blacked out over ten hours!"

"Amnesia?" Zeke theorized. "Happens to me all the time. You get used to it after a while."

"I better not have had another spell over me!" Harper hurried to get back to the Sub Shop without realizing she had left the memories behind of what she had done to her best friend. Heading in the wrong direction, she left Alex unheard and forgotten in the nearly closed off basement of her high school. Losing her voice and her strength, Alex leaned against the dusty steel door with her face resting against it. Pounding at it with a fraction of her strength, she tried to muster up her voice once more.

"Harper…" Her hand pounded the door. "This isn't funny anymore." She sighed. "Let me out…" She felt a freezing draft coming up from under the door. Looking down, she stepped back tiredly as her legs turned to ice, and her breath turned to mist in the air in front of her. Did the school's air conditioner come on? It didn't seem like a normal breeze. It seemed to be attracted to her. She felt the chilling draft coming up her back, any icy touch wrapping around her waist and a strong presence behind her holding her close. When she opened her lips to make a noise, she felt whatever it was rushing into her with the energies of a freight train. She didn't want it in, but she couldn't stop it. Without meaning to, she took a deep breath and tilted her head backward. She had a feeling of might that wasn't hers, she had memories invading her senses that weren't hers and an overwhelming calming sensation that was filling her entire soul. As she lowered her head, she took on another bearing. Her eyes blinked twice then three times, her chest took another deep breath and her fingers straightened rebelliously, furled into fists once and relaxed.

Holding her hands up, Alex looked them over as if she was looking at them for the first time. They were smaller and daintier than Harper's. Her complexion was lighter, and as she touched her face, she embraced and touched every curve and shape of her face before running her fingers through her long dark locks of hair. A light gasp and she tossed her long tresses out and shaped them with her hands. Her head made short even movements as she stepped backward once and paced in a circle between the teacher's desk and the tall pile of forgotten wood desks stacked over each other. She suddenly seemed to remember the locked doorway and charged to confront it, pulling her right arm back and striking it one last time.

A slight warping at the hinges and the outside latch ripped out of the door to flail backward against the door frame as the heavy door slammed open with a loud crash, the sound reverberating through the basement. Looking her escape path over matter-of-factly, Alex's new consciousness cracked her neck muscles to one side and strided outward past a small hand size imprint imbedded in the wrecked door behind her. Her left hand picking her wand off the small edge on the wall, she stepped lightly toward the chambered intersection of basement corridors, leaving the way to the staircase behind to head to the far exterior entrance at the end of the school block. Hidden by trees and dumpsters by the outside, no one knew it was there, or if they ever knew about it, they had forgotten and learned to ignore it by now. Her shoes clapping against the long dark corridor along the way, Alex kept looking toward the late rays of dusk lighting up the window in the door. By the scant light, she saw her reflection in the light bouncing off a window into another classroom. Pausing, she examined how she looked once more, turning her head to the left and then to the right.

"I should have found this girl a long time ago…."


	4. Chapter 4

4

Justin hurried down the steps to the bedrooms carrying his chemistry notebook. Despite starting late, he and Zeke had created a decent experiment to show to the school for the Science Fair next month. All they had to do was develop a presentation. He looked ahead to his parents in the kitchen and pranced through his good mood up to them.

"Mom, dad…" He tried to be humble. "I really think I'm going to get the First Prize trophy for Science this year." He lit up smiling.

"That's great, Justin…" Jerry sipped his coffee and looked to his wife. "I was starting to think the other five were going to get lonely." There was a sound from the steps to the basement, and Harper came around from under the staircase. She was not her usual jovial and happy self. Her face was furrowed with lines of worry, her eyes were confused and her left hand distractedly pulled her hair back behind her ear. She paused at the bottom steps looking up then turned toward Alex's mother.

"Mrs. Russo, has Alex come down yet?" She asked furtively.

"No, honey, she hasn't, but then she usually sleeps until one o'clock on Sunday." Theresa answered.

"Something weird happened to me yesterday…" Harper strided forward trying to think. "Alex and I were…" She noticed the eleven bags from Lafferty's and dropped her jaw in surprise. She looked in the first one then the second and found the black leather jacket with all the zippers and pockets that Alex had wanted. She had been with her two weeks ago when they were going to wait for the sale to get it. "Why that…. She went to the sale without me! How could she do that?" She whirled around upset. "Mrs. Russo, do you know what your daughter is? She's a no good…"

"Harper!" Theresa stopped her. "You were there too!"

"I was?" Harper became confused again.

"Yes…" Theresa looked to her husband with a happy nostalgic grin. "We had a really nice time!"

"We did?" Harper laid the jacket over the bags confused. "Why don't I remember? Did I have another spell on me?"

"Harper…" Jerry came over to help her. "What's the matter? You don't recall anything from yesterday?"

"No! Nothing!"

"Dad…." Justin became concerned. "Whatever Harper had must have been catching. I blacked out part of Friday!"

"You mean…" Jerry thought back to that afternoon. "You don't remember telling us about the Civil War gold in the basement of the school?"

"What Civil War gold in the basement of the school?" Justin stood stunned. "You mean the story mom told me about?" Jerry and Theresa looked at each other as Justin and Harper looked at each other. What was going on here?

"Alex!" They all rushed to the staircase fearing the worst. The story had to be a ruse. It had to be a lie. Something had manipulated them to get Alex to head to the school. They rushed to make sure Alex was in her bedroom then heard someone coming down. Max appeared from the top landing.

"Don't worry…" Max held his hands up to accept their applause. "I put on new underwear this morning."

"Max!" Theresa heart was pounding with fear. "Please tell me Alex is in her room."

"Okay, she's in her room…" Max told her what she wanted to hear and everyone relaxed. "But she really isn't…"

"No!" Jerry started clutching his heart again, and Justin pulled out his wand. When he tapped it, the end lit up with a small bright light equal to a very small sparkler.

"I should have know something was up yesterday when Justin did that spell yesterday without…" Jerry feared the worse and looked to his oldest son. "Justin, what do you have?"

"Dad, I've got my wand linked to Alex's wand." Justin moved his mystical tool to get a direction. Harper watched eagerly waiting for good luck as Justin scanned left and right then behind him and past his mother. His wand was getting a signal from Alex and her wand, but it only got stronger toward the stairs and it lit up even brighter when he aimed it straight up.

"She's in heaven with grandpa." Max mumbled out loud.

"She's on the roof!" Jerry screamed and dashed up the stairs ahead of everyone else. He tore past his room and Alex's and pulled open the door to the linen closet outside the bathroom. The ladder just off to the side headed up to the ledge outside of the lair in the attic. With the mystical portal downstairs, they almost never used it. Jerry jumped on to the second rung and lifted himself up one rung after another with everyone watching under him. At the top was a cast-iron hatch with a lever he had to flip down to open. He hadn't been up here since the summer of 2001 when Max got his kite stuck up here. With a loud metallic thunk, the hatch popped open and Jerry lifted himself up and out. The surface of the roof crunched like broken potato chips under his feet. He tugged his hands under his armpits from the cold wind and narrowed his eyes from the temperature.

"Jerry?" Theresa called to him.

On the roof, Jerry found old burned out Christmas lights, the old aerial TV antenna, Justin's old busted telescope and a rusted out charcoal grill with no bottom. Imbedded in the center was Alex's wand sitting straight up, driven an inch into the roof and discarded without her.


	5. Chapter 5

5

It was hard to look for one's daughter when her one and only friend lived in the basement. Justin then had the idea to try to pull any memories out that Harper might have had during the possession. He placed a spell on her resembling a trance and then had her relive the previous day. She woke up from bed, ambled toward the bathroom down there and recalled brushing her teeth as something she described as a wall of ice coming up behind her. She recalled seeing her breath turning to mist, her mind drifting away and then fainting away to find herself not on the basement floor but back at the school where Zeke had found her. From there, Jerry and Justin headed to the school and walked around it before mystically entering the side entrance and wandering the empty halls looking for Alex. On the way home, they checked out Alex's favorite coffee place and Lafferty's one more time. Harper called her current classmates and old classmates. Max ran down to Battery Park and back asking his friends if they had seen Alex anywhere. No one recalled seeing her anywhere. Against Jerry's wishes, Theresa called the police to report Alex missing, but fearing a connection to their mystical legacy, Jerry called them back a few hours later claiming that Alex had come back home. To quell Theresa's heartbreak, Jerry then called Professor Victorious Crumbs, the kids' old magic teacher at Mecklenburg Academy in Germany to get the word out to the magic and paranormal communities that Alex was missing and a powerful presence was involved. By Monday morning, there was no response.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but it feels weird to get here on time without Alex." Justin told his father.

"I know…" Jerry choked back the fear and uncertainty as he stood with Justin in the front hall of the school. "But the only clue we have to locating her is the cockamamie Civil War gold story that the spirit told when it was passing itself off as you. Your principal ought to be able to shed some light on that."

"Yeah…" Justin looked around the office with the employees and teachers than down the hallway toward his office. He turned round twice trying to get them to spot him, and his father looked down the Senior Classmen hallway before stopping and asking a passing student. Over their heads, Herschel Laritate was ambling his heavy big feet down the stairs from the second story. He was in his Texas jacket, his bolo tie with the ends dancing on his belly and his bloated thick neck covering all traces of his collar. His boots tapped against each step as he came down toward Jerry.

"Mr. Laritate…" Jerry reached to greet him. The huge Texan lifted his hand out of courtesy with his eyes peering over his glasses. "Hi, Jerry Russo, Alex's father…."

"Yes, Mister Russo, we've met several… several… several times…" Laritate sighed aggravatedly over his daughter. "Is there a problem with Alex? I noticed she wasn't here to terrorize the audio-visual squad or make fun of the chess team."

"Alex has this really bad cough…" Jerry set up to cover her absence. Justin stood by him nodding his head. "I mean, when I left the house this morning, she was coughing up all this stuff…"

"Buckets… buckets full…." Justin added.

"Sounds bad…" Laritate had no reason to not believe a story coming from a father who was also a local businessman.

"She could be out for the week." Jerry added. "Maybe two weeks…"

"Could be three." Justin replied.

"Yeah," Jerry prodded Justin to pull back on the excuse. "Anyway, I just wanted you to know that Alex is being taken care of and is in no way missing or skipping school." He paused to look at Justin. "So…." He looked around. "You know, I never noticed just how big this place was. I bet this used to be an old Civil War Hospital…"

"No…" Laritate continued distractedly through the office with Jerry and Justin following behind. "The school was built in 1965. I'm the fifth of five Principals to serve my duty here after Mr. McGovern."

"Oh…" Jerry stayed close on him and passed the front counter in the school office to follow Laritate to the inner door of his office. "But I heard the school was built over an existing foundation?"

"Nope, it was an empty field…" Laritate seemed perturbed. "Now, Mr. Russo, I don't mean to be short, but I somehow blacked out on an entire week, and during that week, I somehow balanced the school budget, made a bunch of promises I don't remember making and tossed out all my old Western relics."

Jerry and Justin looked at each other. They were not expecting that, but it meant they were following the right path.

"There was nothing here?" Jerry asked.

"Nothing…" Herschel confessed. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to figure out why I decided to let Mrs. Watson the librarian hire another librarian." He turned into his office and closed the door. The letters on it came back into Jerry's face as he turned round to face Justin in the outer office. Jerry's mind was racing a mile a minute. Whatever was going on, it started with the kid's principal, not Justin.

"So let's see…" Justin stood and postulated. "Whoever this spirit was, it jumped from Mr. Laritate, to me and then to Harper before entering Alex."

"Yeah…" Jerry followed his son back out to the school foyer. "Plus…" His head shook confusingly in short movements. "This doesn't sound like an evil spirit. It fixed the problems in the school; as you, it befriended your mother…" He paused. "What did it want with Alex?" For instances like this, Jerry wished he had his magic powers back. "Justin," He placed his hand on his son's shoulder. "After school, I want you to go to the haunted church and talk to the ghosts. Maybe they know something." He referred to the old Presbyterian Church over in McCarthy Street with the old historical cemetery spanning the block. Max had often called it Ghost World because it was one of several locations on Manhattan where spirits existed in large numbers. In the past, Justin had had run-ins with a poltergeist named Mantooth there, and Alex often hired the spirits of the dead from there to highlight their Halloween haunted attractions.

"Ghost World?" Justin cringed. "What if I run into Mantooth?" The deceased Vaudeville comic loved to scare Justin into screaming like a girl.

"Say hello to him for me." Jerry turned to head home. "Justin, do it for your sister."

"What did she ever do for me?" Justin turned away and saw Max running to meet him. With him was Freddie the janitor, a former child actor from the Thirties and the Forties who had worked with the Three Stooges and Abbott and Costello, but then he grew up and no one wanted to hire him as a teenager. In the Seventies, he got a bit of publicity by claiming to be a former Little Rascal, but as many people agreed, two roles as an extra did not make him a former Our Gang star. Today, he was just a seventy-year old custodian whose greatest joy was telling the stories of his youth to young boys like Max.

"Dad…" Max introduced the former child star to his father. "This is Freddie. He knows all about this school."

"Good to meet you, Mister Russo…" Freddie spoke with a raspy voice and looked up with two big blue eyes and a head of snowy white formerly blonde hair. He shook Jerry's hand. "You've got a great boy here. Max is always telling me these crazy stories about stuff coming to life in your home, fire-breathing dogs and his sister swimming in a chocolate river."

Jerry and Justin looked to Max. Just what else was he talking about?

"Thank you…" Jerry shook the old-timer's hand. "Uh, Fred…" He gestured Freddie to come stand out of the way in the corner out of the way of the kids. "Could you tell me something? Has anything ever rested here where Tribeca sits now? Something like an old Civil War Hospital?"

"Nope…" Freddie's eyes turned back as he recalled those days. "The area was a vacant lot. Nothing was here."

"Great…" Jerry sighed defeatedly then looked back to his sons.

"You see, Mister Russo…" The janitor continued. "Back then, this was known as the old Frost Plantation. They had a big house back a few dozen feet from the road, but it burned down in the 1860s. Rumor has it Old Man Frost helped finance the Confederate Army, and when the locals found out, they burned it straight to the ground. Well, that's what everyone said…"

"But you know otherwise…" Jerry wanted to hear more.

"The truth of the matter, Mr. Russo…" Freddie looked around as the first school bell rang, and the students started slowing milling toward their early morning class. "The Frost family was a bunch of witches! Sorcerers, mystics, magicians… Whatever you call them…"

Jerry reacted to that part of the story.

"They were highly successful; they owned a lot of land, but a lot of people were scared of them." Freddie continued. "That lie about them financing the Confederates was just an excuse to burn the house down over their heads." He paused as if he had been there. "Parents, five kids, ten servants… all gone, and no one was ever convicted. The only survivor was the eldest son, and he had been away serving the Union as a soldier in Tennessee. He never came home, and the property stayed in the family until his daughter passed away in 1965."

"When the school was built…" Justin commented.

"What kind of people were they?" Jerry asked.

"I hear when they were alive they donated money to charity, shared food with the poor and threw parties for elected officials." Freddie recalled stories he had heard from his grandfather. "They helped get Abraham Lincoln elected as President."

"It's hard to believe anyone could think they were Confederate sympathizers." Justin added. Max just stood humbled by the story and finally understood why it was important to keep their wizardry a secret. It wasn't just to keep magic secret; it was to protect themselves from prejudice and those people who would be afraid of them to create violence.

"Yep," Freddie turned in his blue shirt and dark gray trousers. "Well, I've got bathrooms to clean and grounds to police." He stopped by Max. "Hey, Max, did you hear…" Freddie leaned toward the boy. "Three football players went missing from the team, and the school is serving meatloaf. I don't think that's a coincidence…"

"Aw, man…" Max groaned as the warning bell sounded then dashed for math class. Justin lagged behind. His clean reputation in this school allowed him a lot of leeway with his teachers. He watched Freddie heading toward the janitor's closet and turned to his father.

"The Frost family…" Jerry whispered to him. "I forgot all about them! I thought they had lived out on Staten Island. Your grandfather told me all about them."

"They were wizards?"

"Some of the most powerful…" Jerry grieved a bit for them. "I would have loved to meet any of them. Justin, they created half the spells in the Wizard textbook. They were like celebrities! Everyone loved them."

"Who do you think is in Alex?"

"I don't know."


	6. Chapter 6

6

More than two hundred miles northeast of Manhattan, the Charles and Mystic Rivers flowed inland from Boston Harbor at the influx of land now known as Boston, Massachusetts. Once the hunting grounds of the native Shawmut Indians, the area of Bean Town had changed from a small port village colonized by Puritans and where Colonists once dumped tea into the harbor into one of the most populated and historic towns on the Eastern seaboard. If New York City resonated with the voice of Brat Packer Joey Bishop, the town of Boston resonated with the voice of Vonda Shepard whose fluid voice shaped the town in a popular Nineties television series. Writer William Collins chose this town to escape from his parents for the first time in the Eighties. Baseball pitcher Sam Malone operated a successful bar on Beacon Street, and Richard Fish and John Cage owned and ran their law firm here. Located in the top floor of a Boston brownstone office building, their elevator doors parted to reveal Alex Russo standing in a high-necked sweater and white skirt, a thick parcel of papers clutched tightly to her chest. She strided forward before the glass marble design with the firm's name on it. Collin's widow worked here as a lawyer and junior partner. Alex's brown eyes scanned once to the left and then to the right.

"Hello, I'm Julie Costello…" An attractive blonde appeared before Alex. "Can I help you?"

"John Cage?" Alex spoke lifting her head up. "I've got an appointment." She forced a nervous smile.

"Miss Frost…" Julie shook the young girl's hand. "Yes, he's waiting for you…"

"Thank you…" Alex shined.

"I thought you were much older by your voice on the phone." She gestured left down to a corridor off the entryway.

"I get it all the time." They passed the office of Nell Porter and her associate, Ling Wu. They glanced out at Julie and Alex together and did a double take.

"Was that Mikayla?" Ling wondered.

"John?" The cute assistant office manager knocked at the office door of John Herschel Cage, the senior lawyer of the firm with Richard Fish. He was a short puckish figure with receding curly brown and gray hair trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey in an expensive suit. His owlish eyes looked up, checked his watch and lit up as he moved to his feet and came around his desk holding out his hand to meet the person who had identified herself as Monica Frost on the phone the previous night from Manhattan. Since the Twenties, her family inheritance was being held in limbo by the local Boston Trust Bank until an heir could be found related to the Frost family. Rumors were when Civil War Lieutenant Theodore Lucius Frost passed away in 1922, his only legal heir at the time was his daughter, Abigail, and she had passed away without ever leaving a will while believing her brother, Teddy, was still alive. The official record claimed that Teddy had died on the Titanic, but reports of him being alive went on for years. The fact that Monica existed was very convenient timing.

"Miss Frost," John spoke in a quiet solemn voice just above a whisper and held her dainty white hand and looked into her exuberant brown eyes. "I'm honored that you called me to handle your inheritance."

"Please, call me Nikki…" Alex removed her jacket and placed it neatly over the chair across from the desk before sitting down, folding her long left leg over her right sensually and tossing back her hair. She laid her parcel across her lap. "Now, as you know, my mother was recommended to contact you by the late Mr. Collins, the writer."

"I knew William very well." John sat on the edge of his desk graciously with his left hand within his right and his eyes earnestly transfixed on the beautiful young girl. "He was a very good and trusting person. His wife is still one of my best friends." He dropped to his feet and crossed round to his seat. "I'm sorry to hear about your mother's passing as well."

"I'm afraid she didn't leave me with much…" Alex choked a bit and reacted remiss before pausing in remembrance and continuing. "Well, as you know, my grandfather's law firm, Radcliffe, Grint and Watson, broke up after World War Two, and it was only until recently that I heard you helped the Fenton family solve their old financial disputes. I assume you still have access to their old records."

"I'm proud to say we have been granted full access to their records." John gestured. "Did you bring proof of your identity?" He reached to Alex surrendering her paperwork. Laying it before him, John undid the string holding it tightly closed and placed out neatly before him the legal papers of a single mother who he never knew.

"Let's see, birth certificate, social security card, driver's license, old photos…" He paused to take a look at something. "A Nineteenth century library card…" He held the faded sepia-toned card up to the light.

Alex rolled her eyes upward hopefully.

"Mother's birth certificate, her marriage certificate, your father's death certificate…" There were other random things here like tax receipts and letters from the 1950s. "As you know…." John shuffled through her paperwork. "The Frost family fortune has been locked in gratuity since 1912 when Teddy Frost passed away, and his daughter left her portion of it to several charities when she died in 1965. Unfortunately, even with all this paperwork, a judge is going to want irrefutable evidence that you're the last living heir to the fortune."

"Like what?" Alex leaned back in her seat.

"Well, like a DNA test…."

"What?" Alex reacted a bit distracted. She paused and thought a second. "I thought my blood test was in there." She reached and tugged at her left ear while giving a slight nose twitch. John checked her papers as a solitary sheet shot up out of the top like a high school student raising his hand. John jumped to see it bounce up from the back of the file. If it had been a snake it might have bit him.

"Found it…." John looked it over. It had been performed at Collinsport General Hospital in Maine on March 13, 1993 against tissue known to be from surgery Abigail had in 1962. Over the years, no more than seventy-three claimants had tried to gain access to the fortune, both legally and illegally, and as John viewed the word "Positive Match" on it, he felt his heart about to burst from being part of the solution to such a historical riddle.

"I see no reason Judge Cone won't let you have your father's inheritance."

"Oh God…" Alex suddenly broke down emotionally. "I just wish my mother was alive to see this."

"Could you just sign this for me?" John pulled out a waver for her to sign. "You know… you're going to be very famous after this gets out."

"Oh, please, no publicity…." Alex looked terrified. "I can't stand public displays of attention."

"I'll keep it as private as possible." John's quiet whisper of a voice sounded. "Now…" He looked at her signature. She had signed "Monica E. Frost" in large flowing 19th Century lettering. "Where can I reach you if I need you?"

"I'm staying at the Youth Hostel over on Demonbreun." Alex confessed standing and taking her jacket.

"Oh, no, no, I can put you up at a very nice hotel near here." John picked up his phone. "Have you ever heard of the Tipton Hotel?"


	7. Chapter 7

7

Theresa had not worked in the shop for two days. Although she was first to often admit that she wished Alex was different, she did have good memories of her, and she held on to them by sleeping on Alex's bed in her bedroom. Surrounded by the ugly pink carpet on the walls and the floor scattered with clothes and magazines, the grieving mother woke tiredly and listlessly. She found herself covered by a blanket from the linen closet. Jerry must have come in to check on her last night. In her mind, all she could think of was Alex. Where was her daughter? Who did Alex think she was? What was she doing? A great empty feeling of uncertainty welled up in her as she slowly ambled around and forced herself to sit upward, her head swaying dizzily as she did so. She saw her reflection across from her in Alex's vanity. Her mouth opened just for a yawn, but her mind stayed stuck on Alex. Where was she? Where was she?

"Theresa…" Jerry came strolling in carrying a cop of coffee extended toward her. "Good morning…" His voice was quiet and sympathetic.

"Have you heard anything?"

"Nothing, but look…" Jerry let go of the coffee mug as Theresa's fingers wrapped around it and lifted it to her feet. "It won't be long now. She may be able to hide from normal people, but she can't hide from a magic search. Someone is going to find her."

"Why Alex?" Theresa swayed a bit on the edge of the bed and shook her head slowly. "This spirit was briefly Justin and even Harper. Why did it choose to be Alex?"

"Well, Alex has always had untapped potential…" Jerry had thought about this rationally and logically trying to figure this out for himself. "Maybe it felt more stronger as her…" He paused. "Maybe… it needed her for some reason."

"She's going to come home, right, Jerry?" Theresa looked into her husband's brown eyes.

"She's going to come home." Jerry said it with more resolution. "As soon as I hear anything, I'm going to…" He heard Justin bumping the door to Alex's room and scowled a bit confused as the boy pulled out a tape measure and flailed it to extend the ling strip of numbers to measure the room. He measured from the back wall to the door and pulled out a pad and pencil to scribble something down. Rolling his tape back up, he jerked it again to unreel it and measured it from the left wall to the right wall.

"Justin," Jerry had inkling what he was doing but wanted to hear him say it. "What are you doing?"

"Would you mind if I knocked out that wall to create a bio-dome?" He pointed with his pencil to the wall separating his room from Alex's.

"Justin, you are not taking over your sister's room!" Theresa stood to confront him. "She's going to come home!"

"I know she is." Justin was now looking to see how her bed came apart. "But when she returns she can move in with Harper in the basement." He nodded with a half-serious smile and measured how big the bedpost of Alex's bed reached. "How much do you think I can get for Alex's bed?"

"Out!" Jerry pointed the way to the hallway.

"Okay, okay…" Justin nodded his head annoyingly. "But remember what Benjamin Franklin said," He posed a bit. "It is best to prepare for the worst than to deceive ourselves by hoping for the best!" He over-emphasized his departure by lifting his head and marching out still defiant with his head up high. Jerry stood behind him shaking his head in disapproval. Theresa's hand reached up tiredly and emotionally to wipe the brow of her head. She moved distractedly for the wall then turned around looking for support from her husband.

"The nerve of him…." Jerry spoke annoyingly.

"He's just masking his pain…" Theresa mentioned. "Jerry, isn't there some spell that you could…"

Max now walked in carrying a box. He placed it on the bureau and raked his arm across the top knocking Alex's stuff to the floor in the corner. He pulled out the top drawer and turned it upside down to dump his sister's underwear and unmentionables on to the carpet. Reinserting it into its space, he began carefully unloading all his old comic books.

"Max, you're not moving in here either!" Jerry told him.

"I'm not moving in here." Max grinned abashedly. "I'm using it for storage… and maybe a den." He pulled out another drawer, dumped out Alex's t-shirts into the corner and began unloading more comic books. "Man, I'm going to have a hell of a time getting my canoe in here."

"Max…" Theresa's jaw dropped and she marched back over to remove Max's comic books and start picking up her daughter's clothes. "You're not storing anything in here!"

"Where'd you get a canoe?' Jerry asked confused.

"How much do you think I can get for Alex's bed?" Max stepped aside then looked it over up and down. It was a large four-poster bed with a huge oak headboard and footboard. It looked as if it came out of a castle.

"Out! Out! Out!" Theresa lightly pushed him against his will out of the room past Harper carrying several dresses on hangers over her shoulder and a huge overnight bag in her other hand.

"Thanks for getting rid of him, Mrs. Russo…" She headed straight toward the closet, pushed Alex's clothes to the end and hung her own creations. "I mean… some people just can't take a hint." She turned around, caught her breath and placed her bag in the big chair in the corner. "I've got seven more things to come up…"

"Harper…" Jerry now had his chance to sound annoyed. "You're not moving in here either!"

"Mrs. Russo said I could."

Theresa turned her big brown doe-like eyes to her husband responding so forlornly. She did say that!

"Theresa?!"

"Just until Alex gets home…" The unhappy mother tried to get him to understand why she said that. "Besides, it gets creepy down in the basement." Behind them, Harper jumped backward on to the bed and sank deep into it.

"Boy, am I going to sleep tonight!" Harper announced expectantly, but deep down, she had to wonder where Alex was. Where was she sleeping? Who was she meeting, and was she aware at all what had happened to her? Two hundred miles away in the city of the Boston Red Sox, a yellow taxicab turned from Beacon Street toward the high imposing Tipton Hotel on St. Charles with another familiar face sitting alone in the back seat. Alex looked out through the tinted car windows covered in the rain drops of the light rain and watched as a small battalion of hotel employees rushed to meet her. They treated her like royalty. Norman the doorman opened her door for her and reached for her hand as Alex stepped on to the curb with one leg extending from under her skirt. Bellboys collected her luggage on to a carousel and pulled it behind her under the emerald green canopy out front highlighted in gold. The gold-plated doors were emblazoned with large gold letters on each door and as she entered, Alex turned round on her heel taking in the opulence of this five-star hotel. A huge crystal chandelier hung over the sunken lobby, a short set of steps guide her past the concierge to her right, green painted elevators on the landing opening and accepting businessmen and diplomats. The gold yellow carpet felt as if she was sinking into it. Priceless museum pieces decorated and accentuated the grandeur of the lobby. Across the back of the lobby was a huge staircase of grand mahogany lifting to the second and third floors hidden above. The hotel manager looked up from the admittance after being told who she was. Dressed in a short white skirt with a green blouse and matching jacket, Alex moved lightly as if she were gliding to meet her destiny. Manager Stacy Orpington came to greet her.

"Miss Frost, welcome to the Tipton." The fifty-something former museum curator spoke with a British accent. She was the successor in the job to the previous manager, Marion Moseby, a high-strung African-American gentleman known for stressing out from the job. A beautiful woman herself with delicate features and closely trimmed dark hair, her fine English customs accentuated her role in the job. "If there is ever anything you need, please don't hesitate to ask. I or my assistant will be glad to help you."

"Maddie Fitzpatrick…" The former candy girl reached to shake Alex's hand. She was another attractive young girl with long blonde hair and soft brown eyes garbed in the uniform of the managerial staff. "I'm sorry, but you look so familiar. Have we met somewhere?"  
>"I don't know…" Alex thought back and tried to think. "But then I think we all seem to look like someone to someone else."<p>

"Maddie…" Miss Orpington was checking the hotel registry. "I have Miss Frost in Suite 715. Would you like to show her the way?"

"Yes, Miss Orpington…" Maddie gestured for Alex to follow. The luggage was still on the landing over the lobby but now was being pushed toward the elevators. Corrie Willows watched from Maddie's old job at the candy counter, and maintenance man Arwin Hawkhauser watched from the way to the hotel's ground floor restaurant. In the days since Moseby had departed, the luggage was now required to take a separate elevator from the guests.

"So, have you every stayed in a hotel before?" Maddie indulged in small talk as the elevator closed.

"No…" Alex lightly lifted her head to count the numbers to the floors. "I've never been out of Collinsport to tell the truth. I just recently got my GED."

"You're from Collinsport!" Maddie lit up at the fifth floor. "Oh my god, I bet you knew Mr. Collins, the writer!"

"How did you know him?" They passed the sixth floor. Alex looked distantly surprised.

"I must have babysat his daughters like a million times…" The doors had opened to the Seventh Floor. "The little monsters…." Maddie continued. "They were not to be underestimated." They stepped out before a table under a portrait of ships at sea under a starry night and fake flowers in an imitation Ming vase. She turned left toward the suite. "So, how did you know him?"

"My mother went to school with him." Alex claimed.

"Maybe that's where we met?" Maddie walked lightly along to the end of the hall. "He invited me and my friend London at this big yearly ball at Collinwood." They heard the service elevator open behind them with Alex's luggage.

"Maybe, but I'm afraid I'm not really good with faces." Alex spoke softly. She was too deep in thought at the moment, but she could not bear to be rude or cause attention to herself. Maddie scanned the computer card in the digital lock and opened the two grand double doors open wide to a grand parlor with a balcony overlooking the street below. A smaller version of the chandelier in the lobby illuminated the room, which was filled with decorative reproductions of Victorian furniture. The lamps had pleated shades and the writing desk was off center from the middle of the room in the corner. Maddie closed the glass French doors to the room now that it was aired out. Alex strolled past the large ornate sofa to look into the bedroom, and stopped under the fireplace emblazoned with the image of an English lord on horseback surrounded by hunting dogs.

"Okay…" Maddie carried out the usual intro. "The honor bar is here…" She opened the compartment on the bar as the luggage rolled into the room. "Your remote to the TV is here." She clicked it on and off as a cabinet opened and closed as if opened by ghosts. "The telephone is here if you need anything. Our night manager is named Esteban; he will do or get you anything to make your stay pleasant, and, oh…." Maddie found some in-line skates hidden under the end table. "I'm sorry, but these must have been left behind by friends of mine. They went off to school awhile back, but we're still finding their stuff across the hotel." Maddie turned around. "If you find anything else, just send it to Carey Martin, she's our entertainment director and their mother."

"I'll remember that." Alex seemed quiet and distracted. She was nothing like the last heiress who had once lived here in the hotel's twenty-fifth floor. London was out-spoken, exuberant and sometimes as dumb as a bag of wet hammers, but Monica "Nikki" Frost was quiet, social and a bit distant as if she were grieving over something lost. Even when she grinned to Maddie, she seemed tortured. Maybe it was because she was now alone. Her parents and family were gone, and she was now living on the inheritance of a fictional father she never really knew based on fake paperwork and credentials mystically conjured out of a book from the New York Public Library.

"Thank you very much, Maddie."

"Have a good day." Smiling as she granted the card for the door to Alex, Maddie loved her new role for the hotel. Closing the doors behind her, she departed Alex to enjoy the peace a quiet. Removing her jacket and tossing it over her mismatched suitcases from the Waverly Street Thrift Store, the brunette sorceress turned straight for the bar and took out the sherry to pour herself a drink. Popping the tall crystal bottle, she poured it to the same amount she had seen her mother do it in 1863 then closed the bottle again. Taking the crystal glass in her left hand, she lightly tipped it to her lips, the sharp tart and sweet taste of the liquor causing a brief reaction to this body.

"Wow…" She gasped. "That actually tastes worse than dad's stuff." She tried it again. Not so bad on the second taste, she downed it on the third tip of the glass, setting the glass side and turning to wander around the room. Her fingers danced over the entertainment center, past the bookshelf next to the bedroom doors and over the second writing desk in the corner with the hotel stationary. She started for the balcony but hesitated at the fireplace, looking up at the fake English lord staring down at her. It was an imitation of a French master done in the British style, the sort used to decorate hospitals and downtown restaurants, but when Alex lifted her arms to it and turned her fingers in circles before it, the paint turned to liquid once more and swirled into patterns of gray, brown and purple and then receded to create faces and shapes. The dashing dark-haired man who appeared was tall and handsome and garbed in Old American clothing. His brunette wife was a beautiful woman with long dark hair to her waist. To his side was a young soldier in the uniform of the Union Army; his other son was an eleven year-old boy with a toy sword. The daughter was eighteen and at the cusp of womanhood in a form-fitting red dress. Her three barefoot younger sisters were all in matching white dresses on the front portico of a Federal-style mansion long gone from the eyes of man.

"Father, I miss you so much." Alex's voice quivered. "I wish you all could be here with me… but…" She lowered her emotional eyes and braced her hand on the mantle. "When you passed over… why did you leave me behind? Did you think I could find my way?" Her red lips parted and sobbed silently. "Why did you not come back for me? Was it to be my destiny for not gaining your approval? Why did you not love me? Was it something I did?" She gradually fell to the floor and sat huddled before the fireplace. She held her head low and dropped to lay on the floor behind the sofa crying and sobbing.


	8. Chapter 8

8

Justin's head was still reeling. His legs felt like limp jelly, and his feet moved as if they were blocks of concrete. Blinking his eyes several times to remain conscious, he pulled his way up the railing of the staircase in the stairwell to the second floor. He hadn't felt like this since he was a kid and his parents took him to Disney World to ride the roller coaster. His hands shook as he gripped the railing and pulled himself up, but even at the top he was afraid he could topple over the banister. He swayed one way and then the next. His eyes sleepily trying to make out the way to the loft, he took a deep breath and stumbled forward into the fire hose outside the door. Bracing himself, he tried to tune out the loud shrill of screams and laughter still echoing through his head, dropped drunkenly on the door and tried turning the knob even as he fingers refused to work. His fingers had no feeling, he wasn't even sure if it was turning, but finally the latch moved and the door and he fell through the door and toward the sofa. His father looked up surprised, and his mother looked alarmed. Harper shrieked to see him staggering in drunk.

"Justin…" Theresa came up to him. "Have you been drinking?"

Justin hugged the sofa cushion and lifted his head to see her.

"I wish…." His voice slurred.

"Oh!" Jerry reacted. "You finally went by Ghost World!" He referred to the deserted and haunted Presbyterian Church over on McCarthy Street. Justin rolled his eyes upset and disgusted toward his father then hugged the sofa a bit tired and wished the world would stop shaking. His eyes were still vibrating in his head, his head felt as if it was about to explode and he felt as if he was about to vomit up his lungs. He felt as if there was a beehive in his lower extremities with insects flying in and out of his ears. His father came over and lifted him up to sit up straight next to him. Harper closed the open loft door and then stood over the sofa with Max to hear any current news Justin might have learned.

"What did you hear?" Jerry acted more like Justin's friend than his father.

"I can't believe I went into that haunted basement for Alex…" Justin grumbled disgustedly and said his sister's name as if it was a dirty word.

"Don't worry, Justin, you did good." His mother handed him hot chocolate milk from the microwave. Clenching it with two hands as if he was he was praying, Justin dizzily lifted it to his lips and took a tiny sip that barely got his mouth wet. Dreamily looking back, he looked around to his family.

"What no marshmallows?"

"Justin!" His father swatted him then apologized. "What did you learn?"

"I think they knew I was coming." Justin sipped his drink again and tried to focus. "I think every obnoxious earthbound spirit within five hundred miles of Manhattan was there. They tossed me around like Godzilla playing with a railroad car, they played keep-away with my wand and then they…" He paused. "You know that game they used to play in the Seventies where they tried to see how many people they could stuff into a phone booth?"

"Yeah…" Jerry listened to him. "I remember doing that a few times."

"They did that to me!" Justin finally felt well enough to raise his voice very annoyed.

"Justin…" Harper looked to Max and back to Justin. "What about Alex?"

"All of the Frost family members passed over after the fire in 1865." Justin announced and sipped more of his hot chocolate without the marshmallows. "The only ghosts we have at school are three Native Americans, two slaves, a headless French colonist…"

"And a partridge in a pear tree…" Max sang the lyrics to break the tension. His parents looked up at him, but it still hurt for Justin to turn his eyes up into his direction. Harper knocked the young comedian up the back of his head.

"Justin, are you sure?" Jerry turned to his boy.

"Yes…"

"Positive?"

"Yes."

"You don't think you should go back to make sure you heard them right…."

Justin just glared back at him. Go back to Ghost World? He'd much rather go hunting for sharks with an uncooked side of beef strapped to his back. He'd rather go into the South Bronx with money hanging out of his pockets and diamonds dripping from his jacket. He'd rather get a tattoo to his back with the lid off a rusty can.

"Well, Jerry…." Theresa stood dismayed and impatient. "What are you going to do next? You said you had a lead to find Alex? Well, where is it? Where is it?" She was entering the stage of grief known as hostility. "You are still no closer to finding our daughter! Where's my baby girl?"

"I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this…" Jerry looked at her angry face and let out a deep defeated breath. "But it looks like we may have to bother Professor Danvers for another personal favor." It was so embarrassing for him to go outside the family for magical matters beyond his knowledge of the mystical arts.

"Justin's old teacher?" Harper remembered the man. He was one of few magicians who had mastered spells from wizardry, sorcery, mysticism and totemistic magic. He had traveled the world to learn from the spirits of old sages and mystics; Danvers' old mentor had learned the arts from Merlin himself. He was reputed to be as powerful as Lord Dumbledore of Hogwarts and as mysterious as Lord Maple of the Canadian Whisper League.

"Yeah…" Jerry sounded defeatedly embarrassed. "Theresa, can you watch the shop? I'll go to see him just as soon as I can get cleaned up. I'm not facing him until I've got myself washed up a bit."

"Jerry…" Theresa came up to him. "I'm sorry for shouting like that, but… what if even he can't find Alex? You said these Frosts were pretty powerful when they were alive."

"They were…" Jerry started up to the bedrooms. "But they were also humanitarians and decent people…" He turned and tramped up the steps of the spiral staircase for his bedroom. In his absence, Harper dropped silently on to the arm of the sofa and tried to hope for the best. Max mulled around trying to think of what the do next, but Justin felt worst of all. He went into the old church on a mission for information to find his sister. He was going to be a hero. He was going to return home with Alex by his side, but Mantooth met him in the old vaults, pretended to be old friends and then invited him over to meet some old Hessian soldiers. They teased him, mocked him and then had fun with him by throwing him around like those guys passed around at those huge pop concerts. He tried to be brave, but his screaming and threats with the wand just mad them laugh louder. They might have been decent people in life, but after years of realizing they could get away with stuff they couldn't do when they were alive, they had all become the most obnoxious band of practical jokers in the world. That church basement was like the movie "Animal House" on endless playback. In his ears, he could hear Mantooth, the old soldiers, dead statesmen, drowned sailors and forgotten merchants all chanting his name.

"Jus-tin, Jus-tin, Jus-tin, Jus-tin…"

"Justin?" Max tapped his brother.

"What?" Justin jumped up almost a foot after getting touched.

"Did you bring me back anything from Ghost World?"

"You want something?" Justin recalled having been bounced around inside a coffin with dried human remains in it. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an old dried up human finger. Harper cringed upon seeing it and held her hand over her mouth.

"Here you go!"

"Oh, man…" Max lit up after getting the mummified finger. "This is so cool!" He grinned at the tint digit. "Look, it's still got a fingernail attached!"


	9. Chapter 9

9

Embarrassed and reluctant, Jerry had cleaned himself up, put on clean clothes and caught a cab to the rows of brownstones on Bleecker Street where Professor Danvers lived amongst normal people as a retired professor of anthropology, but that was just his cover. He was also a very powerful wizard married to a beautiful red-haired demigoddess, and Jerry went to him at times for consultations in the mystical arts, but it would not happen this time. When Jerry arrived, Ally Danvers revealed that her husband was visiting Alexandria, another secret school for Wizards in northern Greece, but she had heard through the magic community that Alex had taken off and told him that she would pass his message along to her husband to get back to him. Crestfallen and defeated again, Jerry turned around and returned back to Waverly Place, but this time he walked the way back to Waverly Place. For some reason, he had the idea he might cross Alex somewhere in the street.

Had his trip deviated through the shopping district of Boston, Massachusetts, he would have seen Alex coming out of Irene's, one of the most expensive dress shops in the city. Carrying a small bag, she was assisted by seven employees carrying her purchases out to her limousine, which she then rode back to the Tipton Hotel. At first, the popular hotel was going to be a temporary thing, but she enjoyed the stay there so much that she stopped looking for a house in the area and started to stay there. She was also starting to see investors and accountants to invest her money to keep from depleting it. Between donating money to local charities, she was also dealing with brokers and businessmen from other major companies. It seemed once the word went out through the business world that the Frost family properties were available for sale, companies with eyes on those properties descended like locusts upon Monica Frost at the Tipton Hotel. Most of them seemed like decent reputable representatives of their companies, but a few of them reminded her of the fancy-talking horse traders of the 19th Century who tried to sell swamp land while lying out the side of their mouth.

"The Old Hawthorne Hotel…" Barney Stinson was a certified public accountant for the Goliath National Bank in Manhattan and one of their favorite employees. "Built in 1836, it once stood as a beacon of hope for travelers, politicians and ambassadors passing through Boston in the Nineteenth Century, but look at it now…." He covered up the old tintype photo with a modern one from the same angle. "It has become old, retired, faded… a former shadow of its old self. It's a soup kitchen where homeless people sleep in the halls and rooms. Hookers frequent out front…"

"He knows about hookers." Marshall Eriksen was the GNB lawyer who accompanied him to legally observe this acquisition.

"Shut up…" Barney whispered to him then continued. "Just think how beautiful this neighborhood would look with…" He flipped up the artist rendering of a GNB building on the site. "…another Goliath National Bank in the area! We're growing! We're expanding! We're coming to you!" Barney was quite the showman, but Alex was not impressed.

"What about the soup kitchen that has been renting the location since 1957?" Alex sat in a slinky white gown in her leather chair with a snifter of brandy in her left hand.

"What?" Barney was not prepared for that question. "Um, uh, there's a nice diner just down the block. We'll give out coupons!"

"The homeless eating in a diner?" Alex made it sound ridiculous, but mostly because it sounded ridiculous.

"I hear the soup is awesome." Barney grinned. "Have you tried their chili?"

"Is he serious?" Alex looked to Marshall.

"I'm afraid he is…"

"GNB has been wanting to get their hands on this building since 1996." Barney tried his hand. "The ownership has been in limbo since 1967. We can take it off your hands for this amount." He slid a check face down across the glass coffee table toward Alex, but she took it and ripped it up without even looking at it.

"You made a mistake. You accidentally tore it up." The skinny blonde investment banker mugged confusingly. "You tore up the check."

"No, no, accident…" Alex dropped the torn check before the two men.

"I get it…" Stinson grinned trying to tell what she wanted. "You want more money…." He looked Alex over. She was a hard person to read. No emotion, no response, no nothing… She sat in the chair palming and sipping her glass snifter of brandy as if she were a member of the Royal Family of England.

"Maybe we can do this another way." Barney made the look. "I mean… I'm a man, you're a woman…"

"Oh, God…" Marshall predicted Barney was about to drop his pants.

"You've been looking at me like a lost lonely kitten wanting someone to stroke it…"

"Oh, please…" Alex laughed under her breath and sipped her brandy. "You smell like Vaseline, your personality stinks, and I feel as if I'm going to vomit just from the scent of your cheap cologne."

Marshall started laughing.

"It's not cheap." Barney sniffed his sleeve. "It costs fifty bucks a pop."

"Here's my counter offer…" Alex dropped a printout from her computer in the bedroom. "The old bottling plant in Echo Valley, it may be a bit out of your way, but the location turned into a ghost town after the plant closed down. Blocks of empty homes and old businesses at cheap property prices plus you could make a lot of money cutting up the factory and selling it as scrap metal. Building a bank here would do wonders for the economy there and get rid of the street gangs."

"You're kidding, right?" Barney scoffed. "Let go of a prime piece of Boston real estate for a piece of nothing in Nowheresville, USA? No, GNB won't go for that."

"Actually, Barney…" Marshall reacted. "That sounds like a really good idea. We wouldn't have to get all those building clearances we'd need in a large town like Boston." Barney shot a very annoyed look at him to stop talking.

"What did I tell you about trying to get involved?" Barney chided him then turned back to Alex. "I know what you want. Even more money, a few shares in GNB? A ride on the Barney Express?" He swayed his hips toward her, but Alex just reacted repulsed. "What will it take?"

"We might as well reschedule this meeting…." Chuckling in disbelief under her breath, Alex rose in her long dress. "I think you're going to be having other problems…" She passed her hand over the crystal ball on the table behind her sofa after briefly looking into it and then tugged at her left ear. Stinson made a scoffing noise.

"I don't have any other problems in my life." Barney grinned. "I'm awesome. My life is awesome. My job is…" His cell phone rang. "Excuse me… Hello?" It was the garage manager at the GNB building where he worked in Manhattan. Something had happened. There was a lot of noise and alarms going on the background. "Mr. Espinoza, what's the problem? What about my Mercedes? What do you mean it exploded? It was just sitting there in the GNB parking garage, how could it have exploded?"

"Oooo…" Alex cringed apologetically. "Karma is a bitch."

"My car?" Barney stood in a state of stunned shock and clicked his phone shut. "I just got that baby. I never even got a chance to break in the back seat." He broke out of his self-imposed state of lament and suddenly rediscovered Alex standing before him. She was a beautiful woman in that form fitting white dress. Her long dark hair hung down her shoulders almost down to her waist. Her dark brown eyes were distant to him. Her presence was practically mystical as if he were standing before an immortal.

"You knew…." Barney looked to Marshall and back to Alex. "Somehow you knew!" He forced a nervous snicker. "What are you? Psychic or something?"

Alex didn't speak. She just forced a knowingly little grin and a warm color rushed to her cheeks. Her eyes even twinkled a bit as her head tilted to one side and her long brunette locks over her shoulder suddenly spilled down her chest. Her hand lifted her brandy up to her red lips.

"I have another opening…" She turned to her planner on the writing desk to her right. "Next week at five on Tuesday…" She looked up with a mysterious enigmatic glint to her expression. "Will I see you then?" Her eyes looked back to Eriksen and Stinson standing before her fireplace under her family portrait.

"Maybe I'll see you sooner…" Barney replied.

"I don't think so…" Alex lightly shook her head. Before her, Barney just shook his head trying to break whatever spell he felt he was under. Was this girl a witch or just a really good manipulator? As she held the door open for her guests to leave, Marshall suddenly recalled his briefcase by the chair and reached to lift it up. As he turned, the woman he knew as Monica Frost was standing over him in that white and baroque designed dress.

"I like you." Marshall had never met another girl who could put Barney in his place. "I don't know what it is, but I really like you."

"I get it all the time…" Alex spoke with a refined honeyed voice and looked to see Maddie standing out in the hallway. Garbed in her blue and white Tipton uniform, the young assistant manager waited for Alex's guests to depart before turning toward Alex and following her into the suite.

"I brought your mail up." She announced with her naturally vivacious personality and produced a wad of letters almost three inches thick. "It's mostly the orphans you bought all the clothes and new toys for at the foundling home."

"Well, this will give me reading material for next month." Alex responded with a light smile and an irreverent teenage girl light entering her face. "Would you like a drink while you're up here, Maddie? I'd like someone to talk to as I wash up for dinner."

"I'm on duty…" Maddie liked her new friendship with this girl. Monica was so much more philanthropic than London Tipton, the previous hotel heiress, and their bond was almost like being sisters. "So…" Maddie followed Alex into her bedroom with the huge canopy bed and grand Victorian furnishings then stopped short of the silver and light blue bathroom with the polished faucets and clear plastic water knobs. "I guess those were the men wanting the Hawthorne." She continued.

"Yes…" Alex turned on the taps to rinse her face and wash her hands.

"Why don't you sell it to them?" Maddie tried to make chitchat. "I mean… I know the soup kitchen occupies the first floor, but they're possibly going to change locations anyway. Rumors are the place is haunted."

"Is it now?" Alex sounded as if she already knew.

"Yeah…" Maddie stopped leaning on the doorway to the bathroom to lightly pace past the grand chest of drawers against the wall and back again across the carpet. "It was one of the last places Mr. Collins visited before he died. He got voices and orbs there." Maddie knew the late author and respected him almost as much as if he was her father. A horror writer by trade, Collins was known a bit more for his paranormal research and contacts in the field of haunted house exploration. In fact, she first met him when he came to try to confirm or bust the rumor about the ghost in the Tipton's Suite 613.

"Well…" Alex dried her face and sprayed herself with fresh perfume. "Isn't that the best reason to not knock it down?"

"What…" Maddie responded confused. "What do you mean?"

"Do you know what happens to earthbound spirits when their homes are destroyed?" Alex brushed out her long brunette locks. "Well, if they're lucky, they can adapt to the altered location, but when they can't, they become homeless and become bound to the cemetery or graveyard where their earthbound remains lie. The problem with that is that graveyards and cemeteries don't teem with the life energies of public locations. Spirits need ectoplasm to survive, and ectoplasm is created from the energies of the living."

"So you're like…" Maddie thought about it and tried to understand. "A paranormal conservationalist?" She stepped aside as Alex moved past her for her jewelry box on the table by the window seat.

"That's a way of looking at it."

"So, what's the deal with trying to get them to buy the Echo Valley property as well?"

"Because the ghosts there deserve a bit more attention there too." Alex announced as she took out a gold necklace with a small brooch at the end to wear to dinner.

"Of course, why did I not guess that?!" Maddie grinned with a light cynical chuckle and looked back to Alex. Upon looking at her in that expensive dress and family heirloom, she suddenly flashed back to her visit to Collinwood before Zack and Cody went off to school. Mr. Moseby and the boy's mother had gone along as chaperones, flown up with a few other guests by Sandpiper Air out of Nantucket Island. Seeing Alex made her recall all the other women at that party in fine dresses, and among them, Ally Collins had tried to match her up with a nervous young man named Justin Russo. His father was supposedly an expert in Arthurian legend or something like that, but his sister was a piece of work. She was loud, obnoxious and incredibly rude. After all this time, Maddie could still hear her loud annoying laugh after Justin had somehow slipped and ripped his pants open on the floor of the Collinwood ballroom. She knew that girl's face as well as if it had happened yesterday.

"Alex Russo?" Maddie stood in shock. After adjusting her hair in her mirror, Monica's eyes looked up to Maddie's reflection in the mirror then turned around slowly to face the blonde college student with her face slightly lowered and her eyes narrowed faintly and without emotion….


	10. Chapter 10

10

Harper kept bringing home Alex's class work from school, and with it, news from her classmates, teachers and staff. In the week Alex had been missing from school, the teachers were now smiling, the audio-visual club was laughing and partying, the school finally had a new flag to put on the flagpole and Principal Laritate wasn't binge-eating out of depression and was down four pounds. Five students finally returned after leaving to be home-schooled. Classes were running smoother, no one was crying and Justin was singing and dancing in Science Class. The grading curve had even bounced back into shape, and both Max and Justin loved it!

"Harper…" Justin grinned as he held the door for her to the loft. "Hasn't this just been the most perfect week?" He did a slow pirouette with Max also grinning ear to ear. "No one has called me a nerd all week, nothing has been stolen from my room…"

"Girls are finally talking to me again!" Max lit up and high-fived Justin. From the table on the landing, Teresa looked up while drinking her coffee and paying the bills.

"You two are disgusting!" Harper rolled her eyes at them and shook her finger into Justin's face. "Justin, this is Alex we're talking about! Your own sister! Deep down, you have to tell me that you miss her just a little bit!"

Justin and Max stood side-by-side looking at Harper a bit confused. The two brothers slowly turned their heads to each other, scowled a bit sure of themselves and shook their heads in unison toward Harper.

"Harper…" Max spoke first. "A girl talked to me today. A real one… Not one created by Alex to embarrass me. A real one."

"Harper…" Justin came around Harper and placed his arm across her back. "Look, you're never going to get us to admit we miss Alex, but you just know… Some how, some way she's going to be back, and until that happens, we are going to enjoy not having a sister." He grinned happily. "Come on… a small bit of you has to be happy we're got a No Alex Vacation?"

"Justin, she's my best friend…"

"What's it like doing your homework without making a copy of it for Alex?" Max asked the question.

Upon hearing that, Harper looked away and lightly grinned.

"We knew it!" Justin and Max started jumping around hysterically and goofily ecstatic after realizing Harper could be just as despicable as they were.

"Well…" Harper quickly lost her grin. "Maybe just a little bit, but she's still my best friend, and I miss her!" The phone rang behind her on the table. "And I'm going to tell Alex how you acted while she was gone!"

"We'll cross that bridge when it happens…" Justin turned round to get the phone, but his mother had already crossed the room to fetch it. Swaying her hair to one side, she lifted the cordless phone to her right ear.

"Hello…" She answered it as the kids moved behind her. "What? Who?" Her face turned to a mixture of happiness and surprise. "Professor Danvers?"

"Yes!" Harper cheered and pumped her arm in victory then looked to Justin. "Alex should be home by next week! Choke on that!" She dared Justin and Max to do anything about it. Theresa took the cordless over to the spiral stairs down into the shop.

"Jerry…" Theresa called for her husband. "Phone for you."

"Theresa…" Jerry was checking his order with the guy who delivered the fresh produce for the sandwich shop. "I'm kind of busy right now. Just take a message."

"It's Professor Danvers!"

Jerry made a face of stunned relief.

"Same order as next week, Ted!" Jerry blurted out quickly. He could wait to pay off his fresh produce guy a few minutes more to find his daughter. He slammed the cash register shut and dashed past the one customer in the shop to get the upstairs phone. He ran faster than the time he had covered it to stop Alex from using his credit card to order the Justin Bieber Commemorative Dish set. Hitting the top landing with all his might, he felt as if he had sprinted it in just three steps. As much as Alex got on his nerves, she was still his baby girl – and he wanted her home!

"Professor Danvers!" He stormed the loft and snatched the cordless from Theresa.

"Jerry, I understand we have another problem involving the kids…" The salt and peppered-haired mystic spoke with a London accent and tossed his teacher's robes over a wooden chair in the alcove of his classroom. The classroom was in the former Temple of Athena in the ancient city of Phthia in the foothills of Mount Olympus. Today, it was a magic-friendly village with a high population of sorcerers and wizards, much like Carpathia, Ontario in Canada and Hogsmeade Village in Scotland. Very few non-magic folk, whether they were called muggles or mortals, lived in the village. The temple was part of the grounds of Alexandria, a magic school for burgeoning young wizards and witches and even a few modern-day demigods. To the public, it might have been just another archaeological dig site, but in the magic community, it was a school for wizards and like several wizard schools, it had a constant problem with keeping a permanent Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher. The usual Muggle Relations Teacher, Clarice Voyant, now filled the position while Danvers covered her classes because of his lifelong experience with non-magic folks.

"Now…" Danvers spoke to Jerry through a levitated period Bell phone with a severed cord; electronic items were not allowed on school grounds. "As I understand it through the grapevine, Alex has disappeared, and she might be inhabited by a wizard spirit." He gestured to a teapot to pour him some tea then sat to judge some test papers.

"Yes, yes, exactly…" Jerry spoke as Harper and his family listened to his side of the conversation. Max and Justin lightly sighed to each other only partially interested. "I was hoping you…"

"I take it you tried a Geiger Spell?"

"Did we try a Geiger Spell?"

Justin nodded and gave a thumb down to reference his success with it.

"No luck." Jerry answered.

"A Custer Location Spell?"

"A Custer Location Spell?" Jerry asked his son and got another thumb down from Justin.

"Dad," The eldest son responded half-interested to find his sister. "I tried a Geiger, the Custer, the Whatznots, the Bermuda Cross-Eyed, the Caractacus, the What-Chu-Doing, the Keplinger Pythagorean, the Abbott-Costello First Base Person Locator, the Duck-Duck-Goose and nearly burned my eyebrows off trying to pull off an Aztec Four Corners. I tried every lost person spell I could think of plus a few of my very own." He gasped to catch his breath. "None of them worked, and I actually accidentally conjured Mikayla at least twice!"

"He got Mikayla?" Danvers sipped his tea as he listened through his end. "I always did like her music; shame she stopped singing to focus on acting." He swallowed his tea and lifted his head. "Jerry, if Justin has gone through all these spells, and still can't find Alex, then whoever she is now is using a cloaking spell. She does not want to be found."

"But you know how to find her, right?" Jerry tried to be optimistic.

"Well…" Danvers mulled it over. "Maybe if we knew who was using her body…" He sipped his tea again. "I mean, Jerry, this is rather getting ridiculous. How many times has Alex been replaced? I mean, two ghosts, one demigoddess…"

"Uh, one ghost and one demigoddess…" Jerry looked at Harper. "And Harper at least once…." He lowered his voice a bit. Standing nearby, Harper remembered that awkward body-switching incident.

"Not a happy experience…." She recalled.

"Professor, we have reason to believed Alex might be now one of the Frost family…." Jerry continued.

Danvers suddenly coughed on his tea.

"Yikes!" He uttered expression of disbelief under his breath. "Jerry…" Danvers became retrospective and set aside his cup. He flashed back on his past and old faces from ages gone by and feelings he had forgotten. A deep breath came up from his lungs and a tear dropped from his eye and rolled down to his goatee. "That's a name I have not heard in a long time."

"I think he knows them." Jerry told Theresa.

"Jerry…" Danvers recaught himself and gasped reflectively once again. "Old Jack Frost was a very good friend of mine, and his eldest son Teddy was one of my very first protégés. They were some of the most philanthropic people I ever knew, and their mastery of the mystical arts…" Danvers chuckled nostalgically. "It tore me apart when I heard what had happened to them. They adored living around muggles; they loved sharing their wealth." He paused a moment. "I don't see any of them doing this."

"You don't?" Jerry's heart sank. When he gasped, Theresa fretted, and Harper drifted away from listening. She couldn't bear to listen more. Even Justin gasped a bit to see them so defeated. Even Max felt the intense sadness.

"Look…" Danvers looked down to his curriculum. "I've got this weekend booked heavily, but if I can cancel anything, I will be there. No one, not even a wizard, can disappear completely. We will find Alex!"

"Thanks, professor…" Jerry hung up the phone and looked to his wife. He was dejected and disturbed by the reality of what was happening. He wanted hope, but he also had to be realistic. "I don't think we're going to be finding Alex anytime soon."

Harper heard whistling and looked beyond Max toward the landing. The wind had picked up outside and the breeze whistled around the crack around the door to the patio. Jerry looked up at the strange phenomenon as the whistling noise increased and decreased just before a strong gust blew the door open. It was a bright dusky day with an overcast light blue sky. There was not a breeze in sight to blow the door open. When Theresa turned to close the patio door, she looked out toward a large brown owl coming straight at her from the roofs across the street. It was the largest owl she had ever seen. It flew straight into the room and sailed over the stairs just over Harper who shrieked as it came near her. It sailed over the TV against the far wall and came down on the kitchen counter where it landed on the range top. It had an envelope in his mouth.

"Justin…" Jerry gasped and looked around. "Did you try getting enrolled in Hogwarts again?"

"No…" Justin caught his breath and turned toward the owl. He was the only one who knew that it was customary to reward an owl with a treat that delivered a wizard letter. He took a few pieces of dried chicken off the leftovers in the refrigerator and offered it to the owl. It was a large one, about two feet tall and covered in mottled black and brown feathers. Even Harper awed at how beautiful it was at rest, but before Max could try to stroke it, it dropped the envelope, gobbled up the smaller of the two pieces Justin offered it and grabbed the other piece to jump off the counter, sail over the sofa and out the patio door once more. Theresa was holding her heart from that amount of excitement. Not only did she have to get used to her husband and children as wizards, but she also had to face the myriad customs and quirks of wizards from other countries. Justin picked up the envelope and turned it around.

"Dad…" Justin read the recipient. "It's from Alex!"

"Alex?" Jerry looked to Theresa and took the envelope from Justin trying to open it, but it must have been bewitched, because the letter was fighting to get away from him. Trying to hold on to it to read, he became forced to let go of it struggling to get free and watched it fly up and fold itself in from the corners to resemble a small mouth made of paper levitating itself in the air before the family.

"Dear Dad…." Alex's voice came from it. "I'm sorry I ran away, but I decided to tell you why I did what I did so you wouldn't worry. As you know, there was and has always been a very likely possibility that I am not meant to win the right to be the family wizard. I'm okay with that. It means so much more to Justin that I wouldn't have the heart to take it away from him…"

"Alex, please, that's not true…" Jerry tried to talking to her through the letter, but it kept talking.

"I ran away because I needed to find myself and decide what I really want, and I have finally found it." Alex's voice continued unabated. "I'm finally happy. I'm healthy and I'm studying hard to get my high school equivalency diploma. I've just got to get away from Waverly Place. I could never be the person I wanted to be there. Please, stop looking for me because you will never find me. I promise to visit sometime in the future, but not just yet, because I'm just so busy. I love you and mom. Please, I have to do this… Love, Alex…" The letter unfolded to a sheet of paper again and floated down to the floor.

Harper stood stunned. Max couldn't speak.

"Alex!" Theresa shrieked and tried talking to the letter. "You listen to me, young lady! You get your ass back here and…"

"Mom, mom, mom…" Justin stopped her from ripping the letter. "That's not Alex! It's just Wizard Mail." He tried to tell her. "It only tells you what was read on it."

"Alex isn't coming back?" Harper was so depressed. "Why would she leave me?"

"I can think of a few reasons…" Max mumbled under breath, but Harper must have heard him because she smacked him upside the back of his head.

"This…" Jerry took the letter. "…was not Alex." He took a deep breath. "Whoever this was doesn't know we've already connected them to the Frost family. They're trying to throw us off…"

"Mr. Russo…" Harper spoke up. "I thought you said these wizards were really nice. Why would they do this to us?"

"Because…" Jerry reacted and thought about it. "It just… Harper, don't make me try to think!" He looked at the letter again for clues. It wasn't regular paper or notebook paper. It was embroidered with designs in the surface and had a symbol in it from the kind that hotel stationary used. "Justin…" He turned to his son. "What does that look like to you?"

"It looks like…" Justin held it to the light. "A dancing hippogriff with… a clump of rye in one claw and…"

"A sword?"

"A sword!" Justin grinned and looked to his father. He looked bewildered but tried to hide it. "I have no idea what that means!"

"That's the old Russo Family Crest…." Jerry announced. "It hasn't been used since your ancestors left Europe. I haven't even seen it in years, and if I haven't seen it, I'm pretty sure Alex wouldn't know it."

"Jerry, what does that mean?"

"I means whoever sent this wanted to hide something on this paper." Jerry grinned. "We need to reverse enchant this letter."

"I can do it." Justin pulled out his wand.

"No, Justin…" Jerry rolled the letter into his hand. "I'm sure you could do it, but it needs to be done carefully. We'd only get one chance at it." He heard a knocking sound at the door to the loft. Getting off the sofa, Max headed over to the sound and opened the doorway to one of Justin's friends from Wiz Tech.

"Hello, Russo family…" He poked his head in from the side. His wild curly brown hair appearing first, Johnathan Danforth Collins had shared broomstick-riding class and potions class with Justin. He was a funny jovial guy who usually lived in Alaska, but at Wiz-Tech, he was the one of the school Quidditch champions. "Justin, I found Alex hiding at Wiz-Tech; help me get her in…"

"You found Alex?" Harper squealed excitedly and stepped back as Justin helped Aaron in the hallway. The family reacted surprised and excited as Justin and Johnny carried the girl in bound up in ropes around her legs, waist and wrist. She also had a gag around her mouth. She was dressed in faded jeans and a white top with her bare arms restained in front of her, but there were a few things off with her appearance. She did not seem as lean as Alex, and she seemed more physically endowed as a teenager. Her hair was longer and straighter. Justin carried her feet, and Johnny carried her shoulders.

"Why is she tied up like that?" Theresa started untying her.

"Well, she kind of escaped me three times on the way…" The African-American wizard confessed.

"Wait a second," Jerry took the gag off his alleged daughter. "This isn't Alex! It's Melissa!"

"Melissa?"

"Told you!" Melissa got the gag out of her mouth and punched Johnny in the stomach as he doubled over then turned grinning and happy. "Mr. and Mrs. Russo!" She hugged her would-be parents and Max.

"Who the heck is Melissa?" Harper hated getting her hopes up.

"Sometime back, Alex created a clone to sneak out after dark, and Melissa was the ghost who got stuck in it." Justin recalled the incident as if it were yesterday. "We couldn't kill her again or have another Alex around, so Professor Crumb adopted her to raise as his daughter at Wiz-Tech." Harper suddenly recalled the incident. It had happened around a year or so before she had learned Alex and Justin were wizards and long before she had moved into the Russo basement. Despite the fact that she had been bound up and taken against her will in the back of a flying snowmobile, Melissa hugged and kissed her former foster family and moved closer to Justin.

"Justin…" The former female spirit grinned to him romantically. "You're taller and more handsome than I recall…" She squeezed his arm. "And is that a bicep I feel?" She flirted with him.

"Well, I do try to keep in shape…" Justin flirted back then stopped himself. "Wait a second, what the heck am I doing?" He was flirting with a clone of his sister!

"I got a bicep too!" Johnny flexed his arm to her, but she just ignored him.

"Melissa, sit down…" Jerry gestured for his daughter's clone to down on the sofa. Behind them, Justin and Max took Johnny to get a soda from the refrigerator. "You were born the first time at the turn of the century?" He looked into his daughter's face and wished it were really her looking back at him. Harper hung over the sofa listening to her best friend's clone.

"Eighteen eighty-eight…" She confessed.

"Honey…" Theresa took over. "Do you recall the Frost family who owned the property north of here? What do you know about them?"

"All I recall was that it was a pretty big scandal…" Melissa loved seeing the Russos again and hated to hear that Alex had left them. "I mean, there were all these rumors about them being witches and sending money to fund the Confederate Army, but no one ever had any proof, so, when those three men were jailed for starting the fire… Well…"

"Did anyone survive?"

"Just the oldest son; he was a lieutenant in the Fifth Cavalry stationed in Tennessee." Melissa tried thinking back. "All I know about him is that he went away after the fire and the trial. I guess he couldn't handle the memories."

"Did you ever meet any of their spirits?" Jerry asked.

"Mr. Russo…" Melissa exhaled a bit. "Not a lot of people know this, but not all ghosts know each other. People think we interact from multiple time periods, but the truth of the matter is ghosts only know ghosts from their own time periods. Unless you knew like a mediator from both times…"

"So a person who died in the Twenties wouldn't meet a spirit who died in the 1860s…" Jerry replied to make sure he understood.

"Oh my god, the afterlife is controlled by a bureaucracy!" Harper made a face.

"Unless you cross over and become a pure spirit and then you can interact with all spirits." Melissa recalled her years as a ghost. "It's kind of our version of _American Idol_…"

Jerry reacted defeatedly and began grinding his jaw a bit. Next to Melissa, Theresa was descending into depression again. Sitting next to Melissa was the closest she had got to her daughter all week, but it was not the same. She was sweet and innocent, maybe just a bit flighty, but she was not Alex, and they were not going to substitute her for Alex.

"But my wizard training is coming along great!" Melissa lit up. "Professor Crawley at Wiz-Tech says I'm a natural on a broom!"

"That's nice, honey…" Theresa motherly rubbed Melissa's leg to support her and looked away dejectedly.


	11. Chapter 11

11

The young heiress known as Monica Elizabeth Frost looked up through the window of her limousine. She had never been to Los Angeles before and flying on a plane for the first time scared the heck out of her especially when all she had to do was wave her hands and teleport herself to wherever she thought. However, flying First Class more than made up for it. She had champagne and tried sushi for the first time. Mr. Cage had set her up with an accountant to handle and manage her money and funds, and through her, Nikki was suddenly getting asked to donate money to all sorts of charities and institutions. This one near Los Angeles was no different. As the limo pulled through the gates, her brown eyes looked up to a large Mediterranean-style mansion in a residential area of Pasadena. The gathering was in the back ballroom of the house near the pool area and her ride took her around the house to where valets opened the doors and escorted the guests inside. Her hand lifted a compact up to her face to reflect the eyes of Alex Russo back to her. She looked much more attractive in make-up and a new hairstyle.

"Any idea how much you might donate to the university?" Her accountant, Brandy Greenberg, was sitting across from her in a long white evening dress.

"I said, I'd come…" Alex's voice answered. "I didn't say I'd donate." The limo stopped and someone outside. Alex took her purse in her hand, pulled up her wrap up around her bare shoulders and seemed to unconsciously pose in her long red dress. It made her look mature and shapely; maybe a young lady of twenty-two than a girl of eighteen. Her eyes looked up to the walkway to the house leading past meticulously groomed shrubbery and bushes. There were a few roses along the way as she strided forward guided by Brandy. The thirty-something preppie was a lot more anxious to get inside to meet the American version of modern aristocracy. Many of these people were of old money. They were widows with their husband's fortunes, retired captains of industry, known investors from Seattle and Phoenix and even a few celebs from yesteryear whose careers were forgotten by the Eighties. Gliding past the swimming pool area and numerous huddled conversations, a few of them turned to the girl they knew from the scandal rags as the last known living heir to the Frost fortune. Mature women in their seventies were already guessing she might have been illegitimate, but the majority of the older men just looked her over from her long legs and up over her svelte figure and wished they were young again. Seeing Monica Frost in person, they all agreed she was a very attractive young lady. As the steward came around, Alex reached first to take a glass of champagne ahead of Brandy.

"Miss Frost…" The gentleman in the dark suit and blue tie was Professor Charles Seibert, the head administrator for the California Institute of Technology. He took Alex's dainty gloved hand to shake it then wrapped his other hand around it to greet her. "It is such an honor for you to come to out here to our little investors gala."

"Well, actually…" Alex looked to Brandy and then back to Seibert. "I'm only here in the area to say hello to the kids at the South California Children's Hospital…" She looked back to the Professor as he let go of her hand. "So your phone call to my accountant was a little unexpected. No disrespect, but I don't donate to schools. I'm more interested in much more worthy charities."

"I understand, I understand completely…" Seibert escorted her into the game room of the house. Alex looked back to Brandy holding back a bit before heading to the buffet table. "But if you'd just give me just a little bit of your time. After all, it is through the donations of people like yourself that helps the institute make the discoveries that help to cure cancer and develop the equipment that save lives everyday."

"I'm listening…"

"Miss Frost, with a small donation from you to our medical research wing, we can…"

"Mr. Siebert," Another guest came out of nowhere from around three men in conversation. "I was wondering if we could finish our little discussion about…" He suddenly noticed Alex. "Oh, let me guess, your daughter?" He grinned earnestly and reached to take her hand.

"No…" Siebert reacted a bit antagonized. "Miss Frost, this is Howard Wolowitz, one of our engineers; Howard, Miss Monica Frost, and I don't recall us having a discussion recently."

"Really," Howard chuckled as his deception fell apart. "Well, it might have been with someone else. So…" He bounced his eyebrows up and down highly attracted to her. "I hear you're from Boston? Go Red Sox!"

"I don't follow sports." Alex tried to keep from looking amused.

"It's actually the only Boston reference he knows." Seibert rolled his eyes embarrassingly and tried to steer her to meet Dr. Leon Klaubauterman from the microbiology wing. Klaubautermann wanted new equipment to further his research, and Seibert was scared to death the geeks from the physics wing were going to drive her away before he could get her to donate any money for the medical department. "Now, Howard, go play with you erector set or something before Dr. Cooper wanders over here and ruins…"

"Miss Frost…" A tall skinny guest in a garish suit emerged from out of Howard's retinue. "Allow me to introduce myself, Dr. Sheldon Cooper…"

"Oh god…" Siebert looked away embarrassed.

"Before you squander your donation in a least worthwhile science," Cooper seemed to move and posture his head as if he was a bird in a cage looking at himself in the mirror. "May I interest you in contributing to a much more worthy research project in the physics department. We have been needing an argon laser for the longest time."

"I'm so firing my accountant…" Alex mumbled under her breath and tried to pretend she was distracted by something else. She downed the last of her champagne and looked around trying to get another one.

"Miss Frost, I am so sorry…" Siebert tried to help her. "Please understand, I only wanted you to meet and possibly donate to our medical research department…."

"Well, I'm getting a mixed message here." Cooper looked around feigning a form of confusion. "Dr. Seibert, did you not ask us to come here and try to encourage investors to donate money to our departments? You now seem to be acting as if you don't want us asking for money. Well, which is it and why else are we here?"

Dr. Seibert exhaled a long exasperated sigh.

"Miss Frost," Seibert tried sending things in the right directions. "I would really like you to meet the head of our medical department." He gestured to the buffet table. "His name is Dr. Leon Klaubautermann, and he is right over there; if you could excuse me…" He grabbed suddenly surprised Dr. Cooper hard by the arm and pulled him sharply out of the way to talk to him as verbosely as he could without yelling. Gestured to a bald man in a dark gray suit analyzing and picking over the cheese cubes and small entrees around a bowl of fruit punch on a long table, she stepped lightly trying to make the best of things. Her eyes danced briefly around the game room looking for Brandy and instead landed on the young Hindu male standing by the side and eating shrimp from a small plate. His eyes briefly noticed her looking at him and his eyes turned to nervous fear.

"Hello…" She poured herself a drink and took some cheese and sliced ham on toothpicks with a few crackers on a plate. Her ears waited for a response, but the young professor didn't respond. Struck mute by her good looks, he gazed away looking for help to speak then nervously became distracted by his drink. Not getting a response, Alex rolled her eyes and turned round to meet Klaubautermann if but to run into Howard once more.

"He doesn't speak unless he's got alcohol in him." Howard grinned and explained. "Miss Frost, this is my friend, Dr. Leonard Wolowitz…" He gestured to another young professor wearing glasses.

"Honor to meet you…" Leonard shook her hand, but Alex reacted distracted. Klaubautermann was moving away again to join his wife outside on the patio. She wanted to meet him, but she could not bear to be rude. "I don't think I've ever met a young heiress."

"Well, I'm one…" Alex passed a piece of Swiss cheese through her lips.

"If you don't mind me asking…" Leonard felt a bit charmed by her. He found this girl calling herself Monica Frost to be very attractive with a very magnetic presence. He couldn't stop looking at her. "How does someone so young become so wealthy?"

"I'm psychic…" Alex humorously responded and cleared her throat of her drink before responding in her effort to be charming and appealing. Leonard chuckled at what he thought was a little joke without realizing there was some truth in the modest claim.

"That's funny…" Leonard lightly chortled. "Of course, there's no such think as psychics…"

"Really…" Alex had a brief piece of shrimp. "Well, how do I know that your friend here got the Mars Rover stuck in a ditch…"

Howard looked up shocked and surprised from pouring himself punch.

"Or that you accidentally blew up the elevator in your building…" She noticed Leonard suddenly looking very confused. "Or that your friend is named Rajesh Koothrapalli and that he accidentally burned down part of his high school in India with a defective switch on a homemade volcano…"

Leonard's confusion turned to stunned bewilderment. Raj and Howard were trying to speak but nothing was coming from their moving lips. Alex refilled her drink and turned to Howard.

"By the way…" She leaned in close to him. "We were never going to have sex tonight, and unless you really want to be slapped, I'd forget that pick-up line you were debating on using tonight." She stepped away sipping her drink and heading across the room to meet Dr. Klaubautermann out on the patio.

"How'd she do that?" Ironically, Raj was the first one to speak.

"Did you tell her all that?" Howard asked Raj.

"Me?" Raj was stunned. "I was too busy spelling her perfume!"

"You blew up your high school?" Leonard looked to Rajesh.

"Only a little bit…"

A few feet away, Alex had stopped to meet a few of the other investors and graciously introduce herself. Brandy finally became useful in those efforts, but Alex kept looking toward Klabautermann through the curtains on the windows. He was outside smoking cigars with Dr. Eric Gablehauser. Once more trying to gently tear herself away, she started toward the other set of doors in her path to meeting him, but out of her peripheral vision, she saw Dr. Cooper coming toward her again. An open pointing gesture from her wrist and one of the stewards accidentally tumbled and spilled several drinks from a tray over Sheldon. Taken aback, the eccentric physics expert flailed backward trying to catch himself and caught himself stumbling backward… backward… and backward again as another steward opened a closet to clean up the first mess, but as fast as he opened the closet, Sheldon landed into it and the door slammed shut on its own accord on him. It might have been a faked pratfall, a display of slapstick behavior, but the look of stunned disbelief on Cooper's face made it look like as if he was not doing it himself. Everyone looked over to the closet as a loud crash came from inside it.

"Ouch…." Alex mumbled under breath, sampled an olive taken from the table and finished her drink in time to meet Dr. Klaubautermann under the huge oak tree growing up alongside the outside patio.


	12. Chapter 12

12

In Manhattan, cab driver Ben Bailey drove past the Dolphin Hotel one more time today for the fifth time looking for a fare. It was a clear night with a full moon, and the cold night air left a crisp sharp touch on the warm skin of the denizens of the Big Apple. On the sidewalk, detective Mac Taylor and Danny Messer shared a moment of peace and purchased hot dogs from a vendor at the corner. They talked of work and of their lives side by side as tavern owner Sean Finnerty forgot business and family to take his wife, Claudia, to check out a new restaurant here on the West Side. They were a few of the thousands of human beings who lived in this city and made it the greatest city on Earth. Stopping at the curb, Sean and Claudia waited for their chance to cross as a white and red taxi passed by them on Lexington and turned westbound on Thirty-Fifth Street. More than a dozen businesses and locales flashed by the checkered cab; several more hundred lights flashing on its darkened windows. Pedestrians walking dogs minded their business, young groups of teenagers crossed the streets between vehicles and cars moved around other vehicles in this busy nighttime American city. Several blocks from Lexington, it turned on Waverly and slowed to match the speed limit of this Manhattan community filled with the descendants of immigrants to this country. It passed a road construction sign to a closed off road that had been ripped up and proceeded past the Italian restraunt at the first floor of the apartment building. Down the street, it passed an old theater, a coffee shop and then a familiar bookstore next door to the sandwich place with the glowing neon in the window of a subway car added to the front. The green neon lights read "Sandwiches, Salads and Snacks" while in the frieze about the entrance it read Waverly Subway Sandwich Shop in bold dark blue letters. The cab stopped and the back door opened to allow Professor William Danvers to step out in his loose dark green suit and overcoat, an old worn fedora to his head, and then reach out to assist his lovely companion. Dressed in a long white overcoat bound up to this crisp wafty weather, he guided his companion toward the Russo's private entranceway next door to the bookstore. Guiding the way with his arm held out, he opened the door for his guest and allowed her to proceed first up the stairs to the second floor. To the left was the residence next door, to the right was the way to the Russo family loft. His mysterious female guest stood near the fire hose in the hall as Danvers rapped to the door to announce their arrival. There was a flurry of noise and expectant faces inside before Jerry opened the door.

"Professor Danvers…" Jerry guided him in. "You're here! I wasn't sure if you were arriving by magic or by…"

"Well, Jerry, my guest isn't used to traveling by magic." Danvers removed his coat as he looked around this warm and friendly apartment loft. Justin rose to attention to meet his old mentor, and Harper hurriedly tried to finely adjust her appearance. Max was toward the back in the kitchen area mulling over the stove area with a glass of soda. "Jerry…" Danvers reached to help his companion with her coat. "Allow me to introduce a very old friend of mine, Miss Florence Tanner, one of the most gifted and talented Spiritualists in the country. She's been to the afterlife and back so many times she now requires a passport to go there."

"What is this insane habit of yours of applying human customs to the Spirit World?" She looked back at Danvers somewhat annoyed and incredulous. She was a small dainty woman with a light frame. Her long brown tresses were wrapped in a bun at the back of her neck. She had the wide-open hazel eyes of a young woman, but her facial features were of someone much older. Looking at her, Jerry would have guessed she was younger than himself, but Justin thought she could be much older. She seemed to be one of those people who did not show their real age. Garbed in a form fitting baroque dress with numerous patterns with dark stockings and low-heeled shoes, she appeared very British in her demeanor and personality. She took Jerry and Justin's hands when she met them and lightly lowered her head as part of her behavior when she met Theresa and Harper. Max just bobbed his head to her.

"Yes, well, she also left her sense of humor on the other side." Danvers mumbled humorously to Jerry as Florence immediately bonded with Theresa and guided her to the sofa. Theresa guided her to sit, and Florence lightly sat down by her and took her hand to give her support.

"Mrs. Russo…" Florence forced a light smile. "I feel a lot of tension in you. This is not the first time magic has violated you, is it?"

"No…" Theresa was lightly crying tears of joy but they were also turning to tears of personal misery.

"It's also not the first time your daughter has been replaced; is it?"

"No…" Theresa bobbed her eyes with Kleenex to remove her tears. "When she was a sophomore, a man named Nick Logan got stuck inside her after trying to become my son, and just over a year ago, we learned she was the reincarnation of a demigoddess related to my husband's ancestors…" She paused recalling those incidents.

"I got stuck in Alex once." Harper held up her hand behind the couch and came around to sit behind Theresa. "But that was because of a spell she did that went wrong…" She added trying to be helpful. Theresa patted Harper's leg on the sofa for trying to help and looked back to Florence as the men stood behind them before the bookcase.

"Mrs. Russo…" Florence continued unabated. "I wish I could tell you this was a unique circumstance, but it's not. Spirit walk-ins are much more popular than you think, but they usually happen under much more different circumstances, such as after the spirit has departed the body but before the body has died."

"Jerry, do you recall a woman named Anna Anderson?" Danvers spoke up.

"I do, Professor…" Justin spoke up. "She was a German migrant worker who claimed she was actuality the lost Duchess Anastasia of Russia."

"Very good, Justin…" Danvers reflected fondly on his old ward. "When she tried to commit suicide in that German canal, her spirit passed over and was replaced by the Duchess, spending the rest of her life trying to regain her royalty, and Benito Mussolini… he was a mere soldier in the first World War when he was injured, and after the spirit of Julius Caesar filled him, he tried to re-conquer much of Western Europe. Not all walk-ins though are quite so historical I might add…."

"Most spirit walk-ins are so mundane no one notices them…" Florence added. "A husband who suddenly undertakes painting, a wife who suddenly decides to have more children… Most people attribute them to symptoms of near-death experiences…."

"Is there anyway I could come back as Justin Bieber?" Max came over from the kitchen. "Man, that guy gets all the girls!"

"Max…" Jerry warmly pulled his youngest son over as if to hug him then quickly knocked him upside the head for being embarrassing. "Miss Tanner…" He lightly pushed Max back to the kitchen and knelt down to Florence. "Are you suggesting that our daughter might have passed over?"

"Only as a worst case scenario…" Danvers stood by with his hands thrust deeply into his pockets. "Jerry, like the other times Alex has been replaced, she has always somehow managed to stay behind, and with Florence's help, I'm hopeful we can contact her spirit and find out where she is."

"But why Alex?" Theresa asked the question at the top of her mind. "I mean… this spirit jumped from Justin to Harper and then Alex…."

"And our principal…" Justin and Harper echoed together. "It was our Principal first…" Justin finished.

"Because…" Danvers walked around the sofa. "And mind you, this is just my theory… because Herschel was not a wizard, and Justin, your will was a bit too strong, and Harper…" He turned around to the lovely young girl. "Because it had realized it needed to be Alex." He paused recalling Alex as his student as Tribeca Prep. "She had so much untapped potential; what better person for a wizard spirit to be to help finish out its life mission."

"I want to do a séance." Florence told Theresa. "I want to contact your daughter where she is. I cannot guarantee she will return to us, but at least it will give you answers."

"A séance?" Harper's eyes widened. "A séance… You mean as in talking to the dead?"

"No, for talking to the spirits of the dead…" Florence responded. "The dead don't talk… there is a difference."

"Professor, is this really going to work?" Jerry turned to Danvers.

"Jerry, Florence is the best person in the world for this." The professor answered. "I trust her explicitly in things like this. Even Dumbledore and Lord Maple with their mystical expertise surrender to her experience in this area." He gestured silently to the table on the landing as it and several chairs lifted a few inches from the floor and glided to the middle of the room behind the sofa and in front of the kitchen counter. The curtains even pulled themselves across to block out the view of Waverly Place down below and its view of Manhattan.

"I'm sorry, but I can't do this." Harper was growing apprehensive. "I would do anything in the world for Alex but a séance? I think she'd understand if I wasn't here for this."

"I'll do it!" Max was eager to start. "I haven't talked to Nick since he passed over. I think it would be cool to see what he's up to…"

"Dad…" Justin tugged his father's sleeve. "What if Mantooth shows up? You know how I feel about him."

"Justin…" Jerry looked to his wife and back to his son. "Look, take Max and Harper down to the shop; we'll let you know what happens?" Florence was whispering under her breath to create the mystical spells to protect the residence from evil spirits. Professor Danvers was also adding his own spells knowing full well the sorts of evil spirits that invaded séances. Theresa could only stop and stare. Memories from her grandmother's house were coming back. That house was known to be haunted, and she didn't want to relive those memories.

"Theresa?" Jerry tried to support her.

"For Alex…" She tried mustering up her will power. Miss Tanner had sat down right across from her, crossing herself and uttering protection spells under her breath. Jerry sat to her right, and Professor Danvers sat to her left. When they placed their hands to the table, Teresa placed her hands palms down to the table. The room had been closed off to sunlight, and she wasn't sure if it was magic or not, but the room was getting darker – much darker. She could not see anything from a few feet from the table. Her eyes looked up to Jerry.

"If things get too scary…" Jerry looked to her. "Just close your eyes… I'll be here for you."

"Okay…."

"I call upon the spirits of those who have left us…." Florence moved slightly forward back and forth. "All you earthbound spirits who have not moved on, I beseech you to open your voices."

The room was getting colder. Teresa could see her breath. The candle with Danvers had placed on the table was burning the only light they had and cast an afterglow to their faces. Its flame fluttered a bit as if a door had opened.

"There are many spirits connected here…." Tanner was able to see ghosts attracted to the mystical and paranormal energies from the magic performed in the building. "Several spirits protect the ground here."

"Alex…" Jerry looked to Theresa and back. "Is Alex here?"

"You earthbound spirits…." Tanner tried calling them closer. "Where is Alex Russo?" From the darkness, Theresa could hear men's voices laughing, and the loud shrill voice of a woman cackling with delight. It sounded as if a crowd of people were entering the loft from everywhere. Regressing back to her childhood, she closed her eyes to keep from being scared, but it didn't block out the sounds. Footsteps came closer. Sounds like a woman's shoes sounded off the metal spiral staircase. A phantom cavalry officer called his men in line as they arrived. Danvers was just grinning. He loved this stuff. Jerry meanwhile looked to Theresa and stroked her hand to support her bravery. Down in the well-lighted sandwich shop, Justin noted the effects of the séance coming from above. A few light fixtures had suddenly started swaying, and as Harper waited on tables, she noticed a few chairs being pushed unassisted under table. No one else had noticed it yet.

"Justin…" Harper wandered over to Justin at the register. "Should I try getting an order from that table?"

"I wouldn't." Justin answered as Max just happened to glance through the window to the kitchen. There wasn't anyone in there, and yet, he had seen a thin cadaverous figure quickly rush from one end of the room to the other.

"Justin, I think someone in the kitchen is looking for you." He replied.

"Dude…" Justin shot his brother a look. "That's not even funny!"

"I am calling for the spirit of old Jack Frost!" Upstairs, Florence Tanner lifted her head. Her eyes were closed, but she could see so many in her mind's eye. Ghosts mulled around the table trying to pass on messages. The recently dead wanted to pass messages to their relatives, older ghosts wanted to warn of thinks about to happen and even much older ghosts wanted updates on the world changing around them. Where were their old homes? Where were their old friends and family? Who was now President? What year was it? Many of them just wanted someone to talk to. Jerry and the Professor could see them as partial shades, but Theresa closed her eyes trying not to see them. They seemed gravitated to Florence. They stood around her like guards to protect her from others. There were dozens of muddled and vague conversations going around them, and yet, Florence could somehow hear them all.

"Jack Frost…" Her voice tried to reach out further beyond them all trying to reach one more. "Which of your children has claimed Alex Russo?"

"It's not true…" Theresa spoke.

"Theresa?" Jerry reacted to her.

"It's not true…" Theresa raised her fearful face and opened her eyes. Her bearing had chanced from fearful timid to bold assurance. "None of my children have taken the girl…"

"Madelyne…" Danvers knew instantly who she was. "It's me, William. Jack's friend…"

"William…" Theresa spoke with a plaintive Old English accent and her expression started beaming to him as Jerry watched. "My dearest William…. How long has it been?"

"Over a hundred years…." The professor's face filled with tears and emotion. "It is so good to hear your voice again. I'm so sorry I couldn't be there when you needed me most!" Tears fell from his eyes.

"It wasn't your fault…" Madelyne Frost's face and voice was coming through Theresa. "It happened so fast; we never felt a thing… Your eulogy was so beautiful."

"Mrs. Frost…." Jerry spoke. "Where's my daughter?"

"Your daughter is pursuing another's destiny…" Looking to Jerry, Theresa was almost wholly possessed by the beautiful sorceress by now. The surrounding spirits had backed away in her presence. "…in the tower that reaches to the heavens that lies in the land of our ancestors. I implore you… leave her to her work and seek me no further." She gasped lightly and her face faded away back to Theresa's likeness looking to Jerry. She looked to Danvers, to Florence and back to her husband. "What happened?" Her regular Mexican-accent returned. "Did we find Alex?"

"No…" Jerry defeatedly gasped and removed his hands from the table to brace his head. "We didn't even identify who she is now."

"Jerry, I'm so sorry…" Danvers leaned backward in his seat and mulled over what had happened. The room was warming again, and light was peeking into the room again as Florence regained her bearings. "I really thought we might have learned something new, but… I never really believed the Frosts were behind this, and now they've disavowed it themselves."

"Maybe… maybe not…" Jerry rose from his seat and motioned to the bookcase where he picked up a book, removed an envelope from it and turned back to the table. "What do you think of that?"

The wily professor stood to take the envelope and gestured for the curtains to open and once more bathe the loft with light. He glanced the letter over and checked the insignia.

"A dancing hippogriff with a clump of rye in one claw and a sword in the other…"

"That's the Russo Family Crest…" Jerry announced. "It hasn't appeared on anything in over two hundred years; there's no way Alex would know it."

"Interesting…" Danvers paced lightly and stepped back on to the landing where the table and chairs belonged. He pressed Alex's alleged letter to the glass and looked again to the crest and noticed something else. The area around it was just a shade off where the molecules of ink moved around it by magic had displaced the surrounding molecules in the paper. He tilted his head looking at it again then turned the paper horizontally against the glass. He reached about to move it again, but moved his finger in a counter-clockwise motion before it as the ink moved around again and reverted to their original mortal positions as they were before. The hippogriff bowed and broke apart, the shape sharpened and reposition and the green border turned into a background.

"Here we go…" He took the letter back to Jerry. "It's a gold "T" and a "H" on a green background. It's stationery."

"A "T" and a "H!"" Theresa came around to look at it. "She's now someone with an "T" and a "H" in their names!"

"I've seen something like this before…" Jerry tried to think. "But where?"

"Where Jerry?'" Theresa rapped him upside the back of the head trying to restart his memories. "Where? I want my daughter home!"

"Theresa…" Professor Danvers came up to her, taking her hands in his and kissing them to be as chivalrous as possible. "My dear lady… we will find your daughter." He paused with a sympathetic grin and a light to his bold blue eyes. "Wherever she is, she will be found…"


	13. Chapter 13

13

At the Jeffersonian Institute in the District of Columbia, Dr. Daniel Bradley Goodman straightened his tie and composed himself as he strided from his office and walked through the great hall of the museum. He was a large man at six-foot-two, hardly the image of a renowned archaeology professor, but he spoke with the deep confirmed diction of a Shakespearean thespian. Moving past the large mastodon display in the great hall, he stood for a second in the center of the room and looked around one, twice then turned around to find the young heiress known as Monica Frost standing several feet away in the American history wing looking over artifacts from 18th Century Manhattan. Just behind her was her personal assistant and new accountant Amanda Baldwin, a cute petite redhead dressed in a white and light blue matching jacket and skirt combo with a black sweater. Dressed a bit more casually in designer jeans and a French blouse with a cashmere jacket, Alex's eyes looked up as Goodman approached.

"Miss Frost, enchante…" He took her hand regally to meet her. "It is such an honor to meet you. Thank you for coming to the Jeffersonian."

"I couldn't stop myself from coming." Alex looked up to the large African-American professor. "I love history. I just had to see your artifacts."

"Really!" Goodman was enraptured by this young brunette beauty and looked to the Revolutionary War display she'd been admiring. "So what do you think? What in here captures your interest the most?"

"Well…" Alex stepped away to the Civil War Exhibit. "First thing I noticed were your relics from the Battle of Antietam." She gestured to the general's sword on display amongst several pistols and an old uniform. "You do know your sword is a reproduction."

"Fascinating!" Goodman was in awe. "You know, history teachers don't catch that, but you're right. It is a reproduction. The original is on display in the Smithsonian."

Alex grinned a bit happy with herself.

"Don't get her started…" Amanda spoke up. "She may be a million-dollar heiress, but she talks like a history professor."

"Actually…" Alex continued. "I picked up a book recently about the early Norman conquests into England in the Sixth Century." She looked to Amanda and back to Goodman. "I was reading a bit about the legend of King Arthur and became fascinated with reading about post-Camelot Britain… What kind of Old English artifacts do you have?"

"I'm afraid we don't have anything like that…" Goodman confessed as Alex reacted a bit let down. "But… our Dr. Brennan is studying Viking remains from the period for the Royal Academy in London. If you're interested, I'm sure I could get you in to her lab to see them."

"I'm intrigued." Alex lit up.

"Excuse me…" Amanda followed them from behind as Goodman walked them back through the main hall and toward the off-limits area in the west wing. "But is this the same Dr. Brennan who writes all those forensic crime novels? I love her work."

"One and the same…" Goodman walked a long hall past rooms of artifacts and closed off storage areas. "Temperance is one of the most foremost forensic anthropologists in her field, and you're in luck. She's often assisting the FBI on cases during which time her lab is off limits to the public, but right now, she's between cases and I'm sure she'd be willing to share her insights with you."

"As long as I'm not bothering her." Alex responded.

"For a potential investor and fellow history enthusiast…" Goodman took his security badge out to scan a door. "She will make the time." The door buzzed and unlocked itself. Goodman entered another hallway and turned left toward a glass partition that opened as he walked toward it. Inside was a huge hangar-sized room with a center-raised platform surrounded by machines and special lighting equipment. Gear was suspended on long poles over a metal table in the center. Jeffersonian staff and personnel barely seen in the walk-through now filled the busy room. Magnifying glasses concealed Dr. Brennan's face as she carefully studied and analyzed the partially mummified and preserved remains of a Viking brigand found in the collapsed ramparts of a Welsh castle in Powys. Off to the side, FBI Agent Seeley Booth was engaging Brennan in conversation as Jack Hodges reported on soil and fiber analysis. Dr. Camille Saroyan, the resident forensic pathologist, was coming down the steps as Goodman entered with his guests.

"Dr. Goodman…" She stopped and forced a smile. "What did we do to afford this rare appearance?"

"Just another effort to meet and greet another potential investor and budding fan of history." Goodman greeted her with respect as a colleague. "Camille, allow me to introduce Monica Frost and her assistant, Miss Baldwin."

Booth's head suddenly looked over after hearing those names.

"This is not a good time." Dr. Brennan removed her glasses to reveal her bold and open blue-gray eyes. "We were just about to start unwrapping our specimen for clues to discover why he was found where he was."

"Dr. Brennan…" Goodman came up to meet her at the table. "Miss Frost has a interest in this field, and as you know, potential investors are more apt to make donations when they interested in our work here." Alex had stepped up to the table and had pulled her hair back over one ear as she lightly bowed over the remains. Amanda had stayed a few feet back, somewhat offended or repulsed by the decayed remained of the ancient warrior. He was skeletal with his gaunt face pulled tight against his face, and his eyes petrified to thin slits. His mouth had frozen open in a silent scream; his nose somewhat flattened by agent, but his hair was long and preserved. His leather and iron helmet was sitting next to his head.

"Late Fifth to Early Sixth Century…." Alex looked over him. "Norman bearing, he was fifty-eight years old when he died…."

"We haven't pinpointed his age yet." Brennan responded. "But we do believe he was between forty and sixty when he died." She showed Alex the table on relics from the burial site. "Most of the relics with him are actually Celtic Brythonic in origin, but we don't think he died with them. We believe he was taken hostage in battle, but we don't know why he was buried so far west."

"Our best theory…" Jack Hodges spoke up. "…was that his body might have been used in rituals before it was finally buried."

"No…" Alex looked up. "He was shipwrecked off the Isle of Wight in a storm and accepted into Brythonic culture. They buried him in his original attire to honor him."

"That's too big an assumption to make…" Temperance was baffled by Alex's claim. "There's nothing here to suggest any of that."

"Where are you getting your info?" Camille asked.

"From him…"

Amanda suddenly looked up from checking her cell phone messages. Alex was about to go into one of her psychic tangents again. Jack forced a small smile, Dr. Saroyan reacted a bit stunned, and Brennan and Booth exchanged looks. Even Dr. Goodman forced back a short scoffing cough.

"Are you trying to tell us you're psychic or something?" Booth asked.

"The spirit doesn't just vanish when we die…" Alex spoke with a honeyed voice. "Sometimes it hovers around…"

"You do know there's no such thing as ghosts…" Brennan stated general belief.

"Science says that energy doesn't vanish…" Alex answered. "It just changes form."

Brennan and Saroyan looked toward Goodman.

"Did you find cause of death?" Alex looked up. "He said his left ear was bothering him when he died."

"Well, this was fascinating…" Goodman responded. He was not expecting this turn of events. "Miss, Frost, would you…"

"I'm sorry…" Alex looked up. "I was just trying to be helpful. I forget some people are just not open to new experiences." She postured a bit with a slight tilt of her head and her long dark hair falling down her back.

"No, you weren't a bother…" Camille was first to be diplomatic. "It's just that…" She looked at Temperance growing annoyed. "Kind of took us by surprise…"

"Artifacts." Goodman spoke up to change the subject. "We have some of the most fascinating relics from South London in storage. Miss Frost, if you would like to see them?"

"I would." Alex looked over then raised her hand to Dr. Brennan. "I enjoyed meeting you."

"It's been interesting…" Temperance made the effort to be cordial then turned and took her odometer off the metal stand near her. Turning to depart, Alex ingratiated herself with Dr. Saroyan and Dr. Hodges before leaving with Dr. Goodman. Her assistant followed behind her as Brennan checked the left ear of the remains. Lightly pulling its long blonde hair aside, she looked into the collapsed and dried ear canal and recognized a very old ear infection that would have left a normal man screaming in agony. It was likely caused from being struck to the ear in battle.

"How did she know?" She whispered to herself under breath.

"Bones, can we talk?" Booth kneeled by her ear.

"Now?"

"Yeah…"

"Okay…" She turned to Vincent Nigel Murray, her assistant, standing by and gave him instructions to explore the remains of the injury then followed behind Booth walking off the platform. Goodman and his company was just half a minute away by now as Brennan removed her plastic gloves and tossed them into the wastebasket. Booth turned at the bottom of the steps and mulled around at the bottom.

"What do you think of our Little Miss Heiress?" He turned to Temperance.

"I think she got lucky." Brennan answered. "I mean… she assumes we haven't checked the ears yet and then…"

"Not about that…" Booth looked perturbed. "You know how I often get this feeling about certain people."

"Your guts…" Brennan referred to it.

"Yeah…" Booth looked back the way Goodman had left with the heiress and the assistant and back to Temperance. "Ever since I read the FBI report about her I've had this weird feeling about her. I don't think she's who she says she is."

"You think she's an imposter?"

"I don't know…" Booth couldn't nail down his feelings on the girl. "It's just that… something's off about her." He paused to read the attractive anthropologist's response. "Do you recall the Whelan case where Angela did that facial reconstruction stuff and discovered that their son was adopted?"

"Yes…"

"If I get some photos of the Frost family…" Booth started. "I'd like her to compare the family characteristics with this girl. I mean… she might have the Frost family records and a DNA test, but something tells me our results may say something else."


	14. Chapter 14

14

After three days of running the initials they had past other wizards, magicians and members of the magic community, Theresa suddenly realized that the initials looked a great deal like the signature letters of the Hotel Tipton in Manhattan. That was when Jerry realized where he had seen those initials - he had seen a variant of them when Justin won that cruise of the SS Tipton, the stalwart cruise ship of the Hotel Tipton chain. Jerry immediately checked the hotel out looking for Alex then faced the realization that the hotel chain had locations in forty-three cities across the world from Toronto to London. If there were any hope in finding Alex, they'd have to check all of them.

"Dad…" Justin had been to nine of them and flashing Alex's picture. "Why are we starting from the bottom of the list?" He stood in the loft and looked at his father.

"Because with our luck, she's going to be in the last one we check."

"What if going from the bottom, she still ends up at the end of the list." Justin remarked. Jerry paused and looked back at him. He hated it when Justin was so rational. Theresa looked over from the sofa with an annoyed roll of the eyes. Her daughter was supposed to be home in her body two weeks ago!

"Uh…Oh!" Jerry had an idea. "What if we bounce from the top of the list to the bottom until we get to the middle?"

"Jerry…" Theresa looked up from sorting laundry. "What if we don't find Alex?" She looked up with two distraught eyes.

"We're going to find her." Her husband was a man with a mission. "Okay, Justin, today, you're going to the…." He paused, closed his eyes and waved his finger around on the list of Tiptons printed off the Hotel Tipton Website until it landed on one. He looked under his finger. "Tipton in Boston. I've got a really good feeling about this one."

"You said the same thing about the last seven of them."

"Just say the spell…"

"Okay…" Justin sighed. "Transportus Immortus, the men's room of the Boston Hotel Tipton…" He always chose the bathroom because he knew they'd always be empty and no one would see him appearing out of nowhere, but on this occasion, the odds were against him. As the energies of the teleportation spell faded away and he appeared back in the real world, he not only found himself in the hotel men's room on the first floor but appearing before maintenance engineer Arwin Hawkhauser. Having fixed the leaky pipe under the third sink, Arwin dropped his pipe wrench in his belt and looked up to Justin appearing before him.

"What? How? I…" He stood amazed. Justin was just as shocked to meet him. "Oh my God!" He was giddy with excitement as he composed himself and restained his fear and anxiety. "Let me guess! Are you some sort of time traveler appearing here with extra-temporal matter to energy to matter technology arriving here to observe history?"

"What?" Justin thought fast and realized he too was into science fiction. "Yes, yes, I am! I have arrived here from the 23rd Century on behalf of the United Federation of Planets to tell you…. Uh…" He lost where he was going with this act.

"Arwin Hawkhauser." Arwin though Justin had come for him.

"Arwin Hawkhauser…" Justin continued. "That the fate of the universe is in your hands. Only you can save the future!"

"It's my plans for my invention to cross breed Swiss Cheese with Peanut Butter, isn't it?" Arwin guessed.

"No, the other one."

"My ultra-sonic high-powered mail-sorter?"

"Your other one."

"My trans-dimensional teleporter?"

"Why not?"

"I'll get right back to it." Arwin saluted Justin. "And to think I was going to strip it for parts!"

"Oh, and you can't tell anyone who I am." Justin warned him.

"Who would I tell?!" Arwin turned and rushed from the bathroom leaving Justin behind. Left behind once more, Justin sighed a bit and rolled his eyes to his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

"God, I hope this doesn't come back to bite me in the ass." He mumbled to himself. A brief sigh and he moved forward, pushing open the door to the bathroom and heading into the hotel corridor. Virtually all the Tipton Hotels had the same layout and this one was no different. To his right, a grand stairway went up to the hotel restaurant, but he turned left to head toward the lobby area where he stepped outward on to a grand foyer area with a sunken sitting area and a rotating door heading out of the hotel. He stopped and turned around the gold and mahogany furnished gallery filled with guests and diplomats, with travelers and merchants and tourists and sightseers. Every hotel seemed as grand as the last one if not more. He followed one pathway over to the elevators and then descended down the steps into the lobby. To his right, cute and brunette Corrie Willows had replaced Maddie as the candy girl and Carey Martin managed the acts in the hotel lounge area, saving a night or two for herself and her singing. Her two boys no longer ran loose and unattended through the place. Crossing the sitting area, Justin motioned around wealthy guests and visitors of opulent means. Composing himself, he cleared his throat and stood up straight at the admittance desk as the young lady on duty turned to meet him.

"Hello and welcome to the…" Maddie looked again. "Justin? Oh my god…" She recognized him.

"Maddie?" Justin smirked a bit bashfully. "Oh my God…. I haven't seen you since…"

"The party at Collinwood!" The lovely blonde shined a bit to remember him. "Wow! It's been what? A year or two?"

"Yeah…" Justin tried to be suave. "I didn't know… I mean… I should have… We almost…"

"I bet you have a girlfriend now." Maddie broke his awkwardness.

"What?" Justin remembered Juliet Van Heusen, a beautiful blonde he had fallen for who had also turned out to be a vampire. They had become very close, but spells between her family and a rival werewolf clan had complicated their inherent family curses. Mason had permanently become a wolf, and Juliet had lost her enchanted vitality, but he couldn't go into all those details to Maddie without revealing his mystical heritage. "Oh yeah, I did…." He opted to stay vague about it. "But… things came up."

"I understand." Maddie knew about relationships even if she didn't know about magic. "But we almost had a nice time except for that problem with that girl."

"Yeah, Alex…" Justin grunted remembering the incident at Collinwood.

"Who?" Maddie responded confused.

"Alex…" Justin reminded her. "My sister…"

"That girl was your sister?!" Maddie's mystically altered memories had been tampered with to remove all memories of Alex from them. Justin looked back to Maddie. How could she have forgot that Alex was his sister? Did something happen to remove that memory from her?

"Yeah…." Justin reacted slightly perturbed. "You remember me, but you don't recall Alex? No one ever forgets Alex!"

"I guess I did…" Maddie responded. "I guess it's just because of everything that's happened here since. Do you recall London? She was sent to attend school at sea."

"I remember London." Justin had almost dated her on the ship when he won the cruise.

"Well, Mr. Moseby also left and he got replaced by Miss Orpington…." Maddie talked as she dealt with paperwork. "We've hired a lot more staff, Chef Paollo retired and then Miss Frost moved into the hotel. She is the nicest person in the world."

"Excuse me…" Justin heard a name he knew. "Frost?"

"Monica Frost, the heiress…" Maddie mentioned her name matter-of-factly. "She lives here. She let's me call her Nikki."

Justin felt a strained excited smile coming over him.

"Nikki…" He said the name almost in disbelief. "She let's you call her Nikki."

"Yeah…." Maddie noticed Justin's mood struggling to stay light. "Would you like to meet her? She ought to be back soon. She's buying toys for the local orphans."

"Toys for the local orphans?" Justin was trying to keep himself from laughing. "Yes…" He contained his amused surprise. "I would so love to meet her!"

"Great…" Maddie picked up the stack of envelopes she had filled. "Just let me get these in the mail first." She grinned whole-heartedly to Justin and came from around the front desk headed for the back employee area. In her absence, Justin fought to contain himself. In his gut, he knew he'd found his sister, but should he keep it a secret? Should he keep it from his parents? His life was going so well without her, but if he didn't tell and his parents discovered the truth anyway?

"Nikki…" He chuckled on the name. "She calls herself Nikki."

"Miss Frost…" Someone at the door announced the young heiress, and Justin looked up in shock. He didn't want her seeing him before he could see her. He spun around distractedly and backed out of the way behind a tall hydrangea plant near the candy counter just as Alex entered the Tipton lobby. She had longer hair than he remembered, and she was wearing a violet blouse with a matching white jacket and skirt combo. She looked very well off; her hand fussed a bit with her purse as she entered the lobby past the doorman holding it for her. Close to Justin, Corrie came around trying to see what he was doing.

"Excuse me, sir," She found him hiding out of view. "Are you looking for something?"

"I'm hiding from someone." Justin answered. Corrie looked back to the person she knew as Monica Frost, although almost everyone here called her Nikki. She was the nicest most personable person Corrie knew. Up on the landing, Alex paused to shuffle her purse and looked out past Edward the doorman.

"Vielen Dank, Gustav," She was speaking another language. "Sie bitte diese Spielzeug für die Kinder im Waisenhaus liefern konnten." She looked next to Edward. "Danke, Edward…" She tipped him with a five-dollar bill for holding the door as the sixty-something Tipton employee beamed back a smile. As Justin watched from a far, he watched his sister gliding regally for the elevator and hitting the buttons. The doors opened, and as she entered and spun around to face the front, Justin dived behind the sofa to hide. Did she see him? He wasn't sure, but when he looked back, the elevator was going up to the seventh floor.

"German?" Justin stood shocked. "Since when does she speak German?" He looked to Corrie and back again. "She barely speaks English!"

Corrie looked at Justin a few seconds more, rolled her eyes and stepped back to the candy counter to help a guest. As Justin paced back and forth a bit trying to plan what to do next, Seeley Booth lowered the newspaper he had been reading and tossed it to the table. He rose from the chair carrying a file under his arm while straightening his tie and moved past Justin to hop up on the landing to the elevators. Hitting the buttons on the other elevator, he turned and adjusted his tie once again with his free hand as the elevator doors closed on him rising up into the hotel.

Up in her suite, Alex had changed her attire. Now garbed in a long silver gown with a white housedress, she gestured to her bar area to pour herself a nice sherry. The bottle levitated itself up in time to pour a drink that was ready for her to accept after she had taken her appointment book to her writing desk. A small sip, and she pulled some reading glasses on before sitting down to check off another appointment from her book. Her assistant had booked her a doctor's appointment and then there was that thing with the local school. The kids wanted to thank her for donating new playground equipment. Sundays she spent visiting the local centers and checking to see what they required. Between appearances, she invested and managed her money.

Seeley Booth knocked at the doors of her suite.

Another sip of sherry, Alex rose with her housedress trailing behind her and forming a short train behind her. Gliding across the carpet, she opened her doorway to the tall handsome FBI agent she had met in DC. Booth peeked through the doors of her suite before he noticed her.

"Agent Booth…." Alex was unsure what he wanted. "Entrée…" She invited him in to her suite with a little French and a graceful sway of her left hand.

"I hope I'm not bothering you…" Booth walked in playing detective in this unofficial investigation. His hands were deep into his pockets with the file he was carrying tucked under his arm. Alex curiously narrowed her eyes to him wondering what he was up to.

"No problem…" Alex closed her door and motioned to her liquor cabinet. "I like having guests. Drink?"

"None for me…" Booth raised his head toward her. "That was a neat trick you pulled at the Jeffersonian…" He grinned at her. "I don't think Bones has ever been at a loss for words before."

"It wasn't a trick…" Alex whimsically tilted her head to the side. "I really do have second sight."

"Yeah…" Booth looked back at her. "Well, you don't have to convince me. I know the sorts of things you psychics and mediums can do."

Alex stood and waited with a playful grin for him to get to whatever point that had brought him here.

"Can you also fake a blood test?" Booth went straight to the point. "You see, we scanned your face into our facial reconstruction software and we came up with something weird." He looked up to the Frost family portrait. "Everyone in the Frost family tree looks like each other from your great-grandfather Jack Frost to your Aunt Abigail. We even tested the last known public photo of your father before he vanished, and guess what? He passed. Everyone passed that we know about…" He handed his file to Alex to peruse. "…except you."

"Well," Alex looked the work over. The computer program had matched seventeen points of characteristics common within her family, but they failed to match Alex's body with her real relatives. She was foiled by the science, but her mind was already working. "I was always told I looked more like my mother than my father."

"Oh, yeah…" Booth recalled the paperwork she had provided to create her identity. "What was your mother's name again? Tricia Foster?…" He clicked his tongue. "I can't find anything that says she even exists. Tell me, where was she buried again?"

"I'm sure it's all in my paperwork…" Alex matched wits with him and gave him his file back.

"Is there anyone who can confirm your mother existed?"

"Mr. Collins…" Alex answered. "He went to school with her."

"No…." Booth cringed a bit catching her in another lie. "You see, William was a really good friend of mine." He strolled through her suite knowing he had exposed her. "We went to Camp Arawak together as boys, and I happened to know he was home-schooled for much of his life, and he only attended four years at Collinsport High School, and yet, in all of those four years, they never had a Tricia Foster enrolled there."

"Hmmm…" Alex reacted as if it was news to her. "That's very weird…" She paused by her crystal ball on the table and seemed to polish it. "And when was the last time you saw him before he died?"

"The last time?" Booth thought back to the Annual Collins Family Cotillion as if it had just happened. He didn't mean to, but the memory had come rushing back to him. The Collins family had started them in the Twenties to open Collinwood to their friends and family. They had stopped briefly for several years then were picked up again in the Seventies. William's last public appearance in it was his largest one yet; he had padded the guest list with all his friends and the invitations topped out at over three hundred, three times over what was usual. Seeley had taken Temperance with him, and while they had the chance to visit Collinwood for the first time, they also had the chance too meet so many other guests. In his mind's eye, Booth recalled cajoling with Fox Mulder, hobnobbing with historian Benjamin Gates and even clashing a bit with the ego of Patrick Jane, but there was something else. A memory he had forgotten… When he was standing in the foyer looking at the portrait of the first Barnabas Collins, something had happened. As Bones was talking about how odd it was for William's father to look like his ancestor, someone had smacked into Booth that night. He remembered the girl that night. She was brunette, thin and attractive. She was running from her brother. She and Booth had locked eyes for that minute. What was her name?

"Alex…" Harper came over. "Watch where you're running…" She excused herself. "Excuse us…" They looked at Booth one last time and headed for the buffet set out that night. What was the girl's name again? Booth replayed the scene over from his memory. He reversed it and played it again. The young brunette was racing toward him once more.

"Nikki, watch where you're running…" Harper excused herself in the altered memory. "Excuse us…" She and the girl known as Monica Frost now existed in Booth's memory of the event. As he replayed the incident, another person came into it.

"That girl is going to be the death of me." A stunning brunette appeared. "I'm sorry. I told her to stop running through the halls."

"Seeley…" William appeared that night. "I want you to meet Tricia Foster. She's an old friend of mine from school…" Booth shot forward to the present. Where did those memories come from? He'd never had them before. Had meeting Nikki again reawakened them?

"Your mother…" Booth suddenly realized he had met her. "I met her that night…."

"Who do you believe more?" Alex stood a bit more assuredly as she stopped polishing her crystal ball. "Your research or your memories?" She tilted her head to the side with a light grin.

"Your mother never finished her schooling in Collinsport, did she?" Booth thought about it. "That would explain them not having records for her."

"Now that you mention it…" Alex turned to pour herself more sherry. "I do recall someone saying she transferred to another school." She filled her glass and lifted it to her lips for a drink. "Oh, wait a second…" She set her glass aside and headed back toward her bedroom. Left behind, Seeley picked up and perused his data again. Angela had said that the facial reconstruction software wasn't meant to be absolute without photos of Nikki's maternal family tree. The problem was… no one could find her maternal relatives. In over thirty years, several families named Foster had passed in and out of Collinsport, and being a small town, there was so much room for error in the Collinsport census records. Alex reentered the room.

"Here's my mother." She produced a photo with herself and an older version of herself. "She was beautiful, wasn't she?"

"She sure is…" Booth noticed. In the photo, Tricia looked like Alex as a grown woman of forty holding her daughter on her lap. "I think I briefly met her too." He forced himself to confess.

"Go ahead, take it."

"No, I can't…"

"Are you sure?"

"Positive…" Booth chucked the research he had in a wastebasket by the desk. "I'm not sure why I started this."

"Maybe because you have unresolved feelings over the death of your friend…" Alex replied. Booth looked at her perturbed by her theory.

"I've read a little psychology…" Alex answered.

"Look…" Booth reacted a bit nostalgic. "I'm sorry I confronted you like this. It's just that… Well, on the surface, your claims seemed a bit sketchy."

"I understand…" Alex followed him as he turned to head out.

"Look…" Booth produced his card. "If you ever need any help."

"I'll remember you." Alex took his card then innocently hugged him. Booth chuckled a bit and hugged her back. He headed out and pointed himself for the elevators. Behind him, Alex closed the doors to her suite and turned around with her left hand daintily to her chest. A light gasp and her eyes directed their gaze to her wastebasket by her writing desk. A puff of smoke came from it as flames consumed its contents.

"That's about as close as I ever want to come to that…." She told herself.


	15. Chapter 15

15

Alex was found!

When Jerry and Theresa heard the story Justin told from Boston, Theresa screamed ecstatically and hugged Jerry and her son. Harper cheered too, punching the air around her with her fist. Max on the other hand didn't get it until Justin explained it to him. They had her new name, her new address and the details on her new identity. The only recourse now was what to do next with the info they now had. Monica was not going to come willingly to be pulled out of Alex plus the time restraints on the typical spell for exorcising a spirit from the corporeal body was over. By now, Monica would have absorbed Alex's memories and personality. They would be too immersed in each other's personalities to just be pulled apart. Jerry and Justin would have to plan the assault. They had to peruse the family spell book for the right spell to freeze Alex and get her to Wiz-Tech for Professor Victorious Crumbs to separate them, but that was just the last part. As Monica Frost, Alex was quite powerful as a sorceress. She would have to be faced with an even amount of magic power, and as much as Jerry had his reservations, he hoped both Justin and Max together had enough power between them to surprise and take down their sister.

"You know the spell?" Jerry asked his boys. They were back at the Hotel Tipton and heading up to the seventh floor.

"Somnus Transcendentum…" Justin rolled his wand around his fingers. "Got it…"

"What Justin said…" Max was scratching his head with his wand. "So… Alex is rich now?" He was dreaming of all the things he wanted. "Can I ask her for a car?"

"No…." Jerry rolled his eyes and made a noise of frustration as the elevator stopped at the seventh floor. "Look, don't try talking to her… just freeze her and then we'll do what we can about getting Monica's spirit out of your sister." He checked the room numbers and started counting them down before turning around and following them to the right suite.

"I think she likes to be called Nikki." Max remarked. "I hope she lets me call her, Nikki," His father shot a look at him.

"I still think we should have asked Professor Danvers to come." Justin mumbled out loud. "If Alex is a powerful as we think she is, we're going to need as much power we need on our side."

"Professor Danvers is a very busy man…" He counted down from Room 710 to 715 at the end of the hall. "We can do some things on our own." He paused outside the suite. "Now, look, we do this fast and furious… no hesitating. Hit her with the spell as fast as we can get her to open the door."

"Dad…" Max's mind still had to ask about the money Alex had offered to be left alone. "How about a chocolate-filled swimming pool? I've already got the canoe!"

"Max!" Jerry yelled at him under his voice. Justin swatted his brother up side the head for being stupid. Huddling at the doors to the suite, Jerry worked up his nerve, raised his clenched fingers and knocked at the door just under the brass number plate.

"Room service…" His voice stammered as he mustered up his nerve and lied. He heard movement inside. Max looked to Justin with his wand ready; Justin clenched his wand tightly and determinedly. There were a few other sounds then the sound of light treading and a long dress gliding over a carpet. The lock clicked, a latch was moved aside and Alex opened up the door only a mere foot before recognizing her father and brothers and hurriedly trying to close it again, but something was in the way. It was Jerry's foot to stop her from closing the door. He and his sons stormed the room.

"_Somnus_…" Justin cried out and stopped waving his wand forward. Max posed with his wand thrust forward as Alex spun around and waved her arms before her face. Everything stopped as Jerry waited for Justin to finish the spell. Did he forget the rest of it?

"Transcendentum…" He reminded him. "Justin, Somnus…" He looked again. Justin was frozen in place where he stood. So was Max. They never had a chance. They had become living statues. Jerry waved his hand before his eldest son's face trying to get a reaction then turned to snap his fingers before Max to try and wake him. They were still breathing, and they were still warm, but all their autonomic and conscious will had been locked up. Jerry groaned under his breath and looked to his daughter. She was dressed in a slinky light blue dress with her right arm resting over her huge crystal ball on the table behind the sofa like a little girl playing dress-up. Her head slightly tilted to one side, she was grinning a bit proud of herself.

"Oh, crap…" He was now the only non-magical person in the room.

"Hello, father…" Alex spoke as if she were herself. "I didn't think you'd find me until after Christmas. This is a wonderful surprise." She glided elegantly to her liquor cabinet. "Would you like a nice drink? I bet you'd like a nice Scotch."

"Actually, I'm more of a whiskey guy…" Jerry recaught himself. "Wait a second! What did you do to my sons?!"

"They'll be okay…" Alex poured herself and her father some sherry from a decanter left out. "They'll just come out of feeling really well rested." She handed him his drink.

"Thank you…" Jerry took it and barely sipped it before coughing it up. "You're drinking?!"

"Only an occasional sherry and some wine with my dinner…" Alex acted as a gracious hostess. She glided over to her big chair under her family portrait and lightly lowered herself into it with one leg draped over her other leg and her hand with her sherry regally tipping her drink to her lips. "So…" She looked at him as an outsider. "This one wizard per family thing? Whose idiot idea was that?"

"We still do it…" Jerry stammered. "We're not the only Wizard family that still does it." He looked back to Justin and Max frozen in place. He looked back to Alex. "Who are you?"

"Monica Elizabeth Frost…" Alex claimed. "But my friends call me Nikki…"

"No…" Jerry stood over her. "I contacted the spirit of Madelyne Frost; she promised me none of her children were involved."

"She was right." Alex set her drink aside and lifted her head up. "Madelyne Frost was my step-mother…"

Looking briefly to the portrait with the Frosts and the six children, Jerry dropped stunned into the sofa. He was right the whole time, and so was Danvers. How could he have missed this, but then, how could he have known?

"My father had a brief fling with my mother during the French Revolution…" Alex described Monica's memories. "He was a very charitable man, but he was also quite a charmer. My real mother was a rather powerful sorceress in the court of King Louis the XVIII, but she fled before the Revolution and came to America. She died of tuberculosis shortly thereafter, and Madelyne adopted me afterward to raise as her own, but… despite the love I felt in that house, I just never really felt accepted."

"Is that why you didn't pass over?"

"I don't know…" Alex reacted plaintively. She sipped her sherry. "Do you know what happened the night I died?" She looked back to Jerry. "The night of the fire, I had snuck out to see a boy. His name was Joshua Prince… his family lived down the lane on a small horse farm. We were so in love despite his family being non-magic. Anyway, I was sneaking back home after midnight when I saw our house in flames through the woods. It was horrible. It lit up the night to dark red, turned the trees into huge torches and incinerated the ground around it. Despite the great heat, I pushed myself forward to save my father and family, but I never made it…." Her eyes became emotional as she recalled the events. "I made it inside, made my way up the back stairs and then felt everything coming down on top of me. I felt my hair on fire, my skin boiling and my eyes exploding within my face… I was powerless to stop it. It was all too much for me…

"I woke a few days later in the basement." She continued. "The house was charred to the timbers. Everything was gone. My home was gone. My family was gone. I was invisible and unseen to all who passed by it to see the damage. I watched neighbors and strangers carry the remains of my family out in tiny wrapped packages to be buried. I watched as the house collapsed on itself, and as civilization claimed the area. The orchard was destroyed for progress; the trees were cleared and hauled away. I watched as horseless carriages filled the roads, electricity powered homes and as men came and built the school on the grounds of the property. I saw fashions come and go, I became familiar with the slang and words of each generation because… I knew eventually I'd be strong enough to come back. I'd find someone worthy of me, and I made it with the help of other earthbound spirits and I promised them, if I made it that I'd make sure no earthbound soul would ever be lost again."

"I want my daughter back."

"I'm right here…" She leaned toward him in her revealing dress. "Give me a few months… I'll tell the public I briefly lived with you as my foster family and that you raised me. I can be both Alex and…"

"No…" Jerry shook his head frustratedly. "I want my daughter, Alex, I want her back."

"I can invest in the shop…" Alex was trying to dissuade him. "I'll get a nice place for all of us on Staten Island, give you stocks, bonds and financial security; you as my foster family and…"

"I'd give it all up just to get Alex back…" Jerry pleaded for her and held her hands in his own just to touch her again. "Please…. I know Alex is selfish, lazy and difficult, but…. She's my only daughter. Please let me have her back."

Alex tugged her hands back, rose from the chair and turned away aggravatedly.

"You give money to charity, you help people raise themselves from nothing…" Jerry tried appealing to her conscience. "You invest in all these things and yet… you can't give me my daughter back."

"I can't go back to what I was…." Alex also recalled Monica's memories as a spirit. "I feel for you, Mr. Russo, but… I can do so much more alive than as a spirit." She gestured toward Max and Justin and caught their wands jumping from their hands toward her after disarming them. Regaining their mobility, the two brothers straightened up and looked around trying to realize what had happened to them. Justin groaned and looked around once, but upon seeing his sister in that long revealing dress shaping her figure, he suddenly made a gagging noise and averted his eyes away from her. He turned to the bar, grabbed a bottle of water and started drinking it down to deal with his stomach tying in knots. He was not used to see her in such shapely apparel. Max looked around checking the place over.

"Yeah, this is exactly the kind of place I'm getting if I ever move out…" He looked the suite over from the fireplace to the big television. "Hey, dad, can I stay the weekend with Alex here at her new place?" He switched on her television.

"No!"

"Dad…" Justin rushed around his sister to get to his father. "What happened? What's going on?"

"We're going…." Jerry sounded broken-hearted and grief-stricken. "Max!" He took their wands back from Alex.

"Dad, she gets the channels we don't get!"

Jerry took the remote from him and tossed it to the sofa. Grabbing Max by his sleeve, he escorted him toward the door with Justin rushing to catch up. Skirting around Alex and whoever she was now, the elder Russo son suddenly found himself genuinely afraid of his sister. Distantly watching him from afar, Alex complacently watched and exchanged awkward silences with this family of which she was so briefly a part.

"I'll be expecting my daughter home by Monday for school…" Jerry looked to her. "After that, I'll be going straight to the Wizard's Council…" He headed out...

Alex stood behind and watched as he closed the doors.

"You do that…" She answered.


	16. Chapter 16

16

The confrontation on Saturday had been a disaster. Not only had they failed to take her by surprise, but Monica was trying to tempt them with gifts to sway their attention from her. It was basically Melissa Winters all over again. They did not have the heart to force Monica back to the spirit world, and yet, Jerry and Theresa wanted their daughter back. Harper wanted her best friend back, and back at school, Mr. Laritate wanted to know when Alex was returning to school. With Melissa, all they had to do was send her away, and when Alex was overcome by her past life as Demetria, her own demi-goddess ancestor, Zeus had mystically split her apart with his own immortal power to be fair. Now, their only hope was that Monica offered to be the philanthropist she seemed to be. That Sunday, Jerry ran the subway shop business as usual and Theresa hoped for the best, looking out several times expecting to see her daughter coming home. Harper helped for a while in the shop then returned to adjusting Alex's room for herself to stay in it and that meant making room for her stuff. Hearing the scuffling sounds from the third floor, Justin looked up to see Harper struggling to carry a large floor length mirror down from the top floor by way of the spiral staircase in the loft.

"This is the last of Alex's mirrors." Harper sighed after reaching the bottom landing. "Why does one person need so many mirrors?"

"Harper…" Jerry came up and confronted her. "I don't know why still you're taking stuff out of Alex's room when we're so close to her coming home." He paused. "You're just going to have to take it back up."

Harper looked at him as if he was nuts, glanced back to the spiral staircase she'd been fighting with and looked back to Jerry again.

"Justin…" She turned to Justin at the kitchen table. "Is there a spell to get this mirror back upstairs?"

"Dozens…"

Harper looked back to the Russo family patriarch.

"I'll cross that bridge when we get to it." She responded.

"Jerry…" Theresa's heart had been aflutter since hearing her daughter was alive and living in luxury in Boston. "Is she really coming home? Do you really mean it?"

"I gave her till Monday morning…" Jerry told her again. "If Alex isn't home before then, Justin and I are going to call on the Wizard's Council, and quite frankly… I'm scared to death on how they might rule. There's never been a case of wizard body-stealing before." He moved to the kitchen. "I mean, a charitable person like Monica versus a problem child like Alex… we could still lose her. Our only hope is that Monica does the right thing…"

"Justin…" Theresa turned to her son. "Take me to her. Let me talk to her. I'll appeal to her as a mother…"

"Let me go too." Harper spoke up. "All I need is me and my five friends…" She held up her hand with her five fingers extended then curled them back into a fist. "Wham!" She punched the air. "She would never know what hit her!"

"Harper…" Justin turned to her. "She'd turn you into a mouse."

"Why are you guys always getting me into trouble?" She asked her fist to be funny then rethought the problem. She pushed the mirror toward the side near the bookcase as Max came up from the shop.

"Hey, guys…" He came up with a sandwich of his creation. "Did you know there's a white limousine parked downstairs right now?"

Jerry and Theresa looked at each other and reacted excitedly with hopeful anticipation. There was a knock at the door to the loft. Trying to deal with her nervous energy, Theresa paced once then turned to answer it. Turning the doorknob, she pulled the door open and looked up to see Alex standing there. She was dressed in a high-collared dark violet sweater and a dark blue jacket and skirt. Their eyes met each other instantly.

"Alex!" Theresa reacted as a mother and hugged her. Everyone looked up at once, but it was quickly obvious this was not going to be good news because of instead of hugging her mother, Alex just awkwardly squeezed Theresa back and stroked her back. Theresa felt it too. It was like hugging a stranger. As she pulled herself back, she looked into her daughter's eyes. There was no emotion between them. There was no connection. It was not Alex looking back.

"No…" Theresa's heart was breaking. "No… Alex, please tell me you're in there…" She started crying.

"Hello, Mrs. Russo…" Alex walked forward as Monica Frost in her expensive Dioguardi outfit. "You know, you remind me a lot of my stepmother; she was also a homemaker, but she wasn't quite so obsessed with her age." She looked around. Justin and Harper were standing by the sofa with Jerry at the other side of the room. Max was over by the refrigerator behind the kitchen counter. "I can't stay very long; I'm expected at a dinner by the Manhattan Chamber Of Commerce, but I have here a check for $25,000." She removed it from her purse.

"Yes!" Max cheered and started dancing around. "We're rich! We're rich! I'm buying my own island!" He stopped dancing and rushed up to Justin. "Justin, do you know if the Gilligan Islands are for sale?"

Justin swatted him upside the head.

"No…" Jerry strolled up disapprovingly and stood his ground with his arms folded before his chest. "I want my daughter back."

"I am your daughter!" Alex tried to get them to accept it. "My mind and spirit may be different, but I'm still here! Look, you can come to visit me when you want. You can stay in the hotel, takes trips to Italy, finance a string of subway sandwich shops…"

"I want a dinosaur!" Max blurted out. "Not a big one, just one of those little ones to ride to school! I'll feed it every day!"

"Okay, I got to ask…" Alex gestured to Max. "How many swats to the head does he get a day? This isn't normal!"

"You know what we want…" Jerry stepped forward to console Theresa. "We want our daughter back. No money, no trips, no nothing… Just give us our daughter back."

"Justin…" Alex confronted her brother. "Look, when I was in you, all you kept thinking was how much you wanted your own lab and a bio-dome. I couldn't get you to stop thinking about it. Help me here, and I'll build you one."

Justin looked at her.

"Dad," He looked to his father. "This Alex has money, and she lives so far away! She's an upgrade from the other Alex!" He compelled his father to reconsider. "Come on, don't we deserve better!"

"Justin, forget it!" Jerry struck down that dream. "Monica, either you depart our daughter's body, or we take this to the wizard's council." He paused as he looked to his wife. "We want Alex back."

Alex turned to slowly noticing Harper standing by the tall floor mirror out of Alex's room. Harper looked to Alex, to the Russos then back to Alex.

"No… no, no, no, no, no, no, no….." She was ready to go down fighting. "As much as I might like being wizard, I'm not going there."

"Harper…" Alex broke a small smile as she reached out and stroked Harper's face out of the brief bond they once had. "I had a lot of fun being you."

"What? Uh, thank you…." Harper liked that sentiment then thought again. "I think…"

"But your limited potential for magic would prohibit me greatly, plus everyone already knows me like this…" Alex noticed her reflection in the big mirror, stopped a moment then looked back and fixed her hair. Sighing a bit, she pulled her eyeglasses out of her purse, tapped the mirror three times with her finger and stepped back from the mirror, leaving her reflection behind frozen in its glass.

"I'm out of time." She announced, refolding her check into her chest pocket. "My limo is waiting. Do what you will to me." She turned on her heel and kicked the back of the mirror as her reflection in it spilled out into the real world. Stepping over that mirror reflection given life, she headed out of the loft through the door to the upstairs corridor as the clone on the floor gasped and shivered. It looked around dreamily and bewildered.

"Where am I?" It spoke. "How'd I get back here?"

"Alex?" Theresa looked again and moved forward confusingly. "Is that you?"

"Mom…" The last thing Alex remembered was pounding at the door of an old classroom in the basement of the school. She was frozen to the touch and trembling uncontrollably. What was she doing wearing these fancy clothes? Did she just see herself leaving the loft? After looking at each other, Jerry and Theresa rushed to her and started hugging and squeezing her. Scowling a bit, Alex wondered why they were both crying. She looked to Harper for answers, but even she was hurriedly rushing to hug her again.

"No…" Max was crying for another reason. "No… bring the money back." He missed Other-Alex already. "Bring back Max's Island."

"Say, goodbye to the dinosaur, dude." Justin was the only one to console him.

"Harper…" Alex looked up after being helped to her feet. "Why did you lock me in the basement of the school?"

"Honey…" Theresa couldn't stop smiling. "That wasn't Harper. That was a someone else."

"What?"

"Yes, honey…" Jerry continued. "Harper was possessed by the same female wizard that had possessed you. She used Harper to get to you then moved to a Boston hotel and inherited a lot of money."

"Yeah," Harper spoke up. "You've been gone for over a month and a half!"

"Wait a second…" Alex stumbled around. She had been possessed? Again? How long had she been out this time? A few days? A week? A month? "You mean to tell me that I was possessed by a some witch who had a lot of money and lived in a big hotel?"

"Yeah…"

"And you couldn't have just left me there!"

END


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